Lou's Commentary

A New Way to Be a Player

Monday, September 19th, 2011

By Lou Ann Sabatier, as posted to Pubexec.com

"A benefit of games is that the playing of the game itself creates content."

Gamification: integrating game mechanics into non-game material to increase engagement. Early in 2011, Douglas MacMillan, in Bloomberg Businessweek, called it a growing business to invigorate stale websites. And Gartner Group recently reported that by 2015, 70 percent of the Global 2000 corporations will actively be using Gamification in business. If you want to increase affinity with your brand, grow traffic (up to 20x for some sites) and retention, create new online advertising inventory and lead generation, read on.

An interview with Rick Bolton, Vice President-North America, Tycoon Systems, Inc.

Q. You are encouraging publishers to use games to generate online advertising revenue and lead generation. Can you explain?

The idea behind Gamification is to bring game design principles to engage publication audiences in a non-traditional way. These principles, broadly speaking, are engagement and interactivity with content. This can work well for publishers who obviously have reams of content and are constantly looking for new ways to increase engagement with their content and promote interactivity among their audience, and preferably, monetize the activity as well.

Games are attractive because they engage visitors/readers with your content for long periods of time. Adults that regularly play MMORPGs (massively multiple online role playing games) like World of Warcraft or Tale in the Desert 5 are typically playing for more than 25 hours a week. And these are professionals with an average age of 35 (over 26 percent are over 50 years of age), have far above average income, and are highly educated. This is not teenagers or out of work young men. Data indicates that women engage even longer than men do. Considering that an average publication website visit might be from two to seven minutes, I would say this presents an opportunity.

Q. For generating revenue online?

Yes, by offering yet another mechanism for advertisers and/or sponsors to speak to your online audience. In addition to banner, contextual and directory advertising, this type of advertising affords advertisers the ability to have visitors/readers enter into competition. Products and/or services can be promoted within the competition or with advertising or sponsorship that rides along with it.

Q. Can you cite some examples?

You are publishing a women's fashion trade magazine. A simulation can be created to enter a competition to build a company that would dominate the newest trends in fashion. Participants will make decisions about product line, marketing, sales, production, staffing...all the key elements of building a profitable enterprise. What is really exciting about it when you do it in a simulation format with lots of other people is that you can make many good decisions, but the outcome is also predicated on the decisions of the other players. For instance, you may think that leather boots present an attractive market in the near future and you invest heavily in that market, and if you are correct, you should do well. But if too many of the other players choose to invest likewise, a good trend spotted could result in diluted returns. Simulation can mirror real world business experience very effectively and be entertaining.

Another example in consumer publishing is any financial magazine. Visitors/readers can compete to build the best stock portfolio, build the best retirement plan, or be the top venture capitalist.

The content of most publications can be used as a framework for simulation. Games generally have an objective which is to win and it is easier to build simulations when you can establish a goal for the game. Example: Popular Mechanics most likely would not create a simulation to build the best car. They could, however, create a simulation to build the best car on a specific budget within a specific time frame, etc.

Q. You state "a simulation can be created." That sounds expensive.

The cost of producing a tailored business simulation can be less than the production of a single Web seminar. As with any product, the more you customize, the higher the investment. But remember that new or incremental revenue can be generated from this investment, and rather quickly. It's not long term payback. And unlike a Web seminar, where the second and third will cost almost as much as the first, when you build a game simulation template for your publication, you can easily make variations or completely new games at a fraction of the original cost. You can go so far as to have it match your publishing frequency.

Q. I heard a quote yesterday at a business lunch that comes to mind. "There is no prize for beating your audience to the future." Is Gamification outpacing the audience for most publishers?

If you acknowledge what has evolved in the past few years, whether it is the time people spend playing games on their phone or the value of companies like Zynga who created Farmville, there is little doubt that games can be used to engage audiences. And as you referenced in your last blog about analytics, engagement is a primary metric to measure online.

Transitioning subscribers into a community or building a new community is not often a problem. Getting that community to engage and interact is the problem. To keep the community vibrant, new content must be constantly created. A benefit of games is that the playing of the game itself creates content. And the content is altered in two ways: as you bring in new content from the publication and user generated content from the players.

Q. To your knowledge, are there publishers who have deployed this thinking?

There are a few that I am aware of such as Esquire, Seventeen and Billboard. There are associations using elements of games within training programs for members, but are not yet connecting it to their publication or reader base.  Even some of the game magazines have not leveraged this concept as much as they could. But the topic is being discussed more by publishers in the past few months.

Q. And I imagine that the functionality and portability that tablets offer make this even more attractive?

The ubiquity of tablets brings this to a whole new dimension. While there are some great experiences you can have on a smart phone, until recently, to play sophisticated games, you needed a personal computer. With the advances in tablets, you can carry the experience with you all the time. Mobile enables Gamification to move toward real life concepts and away from actions you take only online.

Q. What process can a publisher follow to move forward exploring games and the revenue associated with implanting it?

Define your goals, identify and segment users, and reward engagement. Ask a sample of your subscribers what type of content they would like to see be offered in more depth. This will often lead to ideas for a game where building deep content is often easier. You can also try to generate ideas with a brainstorming session with your management team. Then bring those ideas to a professional experienced in game design.

Q. What keeps you up at night?

How to make virtual experience as engaging as print or in person. The world is becoming increasingly digital. In most circumstances, I don't believe we have made virtual experiences better. They can be convenient and less expensive, but they are not often better once those advantages are taken away.

Takeaway:

Motivation is at the heart of gaming. Multiple layers of personal motivation can trigger game mechanics (personal, peers and group). The output of that motivation is engagement. Ponder how you can use social gaming to build and engage your community and make money doing it. But handle with care and use tactically. Good game design is not child's play. If you fail, your customers will let you and the world know.

• Read more about Gamification on Mashable Social Media. http://on.mash.to/pnc9Ft
• Watch and learn about the value of fun. http://bit.ly/nRe8fK
• Download presentations on Gamification at http://slidesha.re/pGoFe6

Rick Bolton has been working exclusively in the education and training field since 1999. Most recently, he served as Vice President of Education and Training for SourceMedia, a publishing company with over one million subscribers in the financial services and information technology professions. Prior to SourceMedia, he was the Director of Continuing Professional Education & Training for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Rick worked for several years at the National Association of Securities Dealers (now part of FINRA) and developed their eLearning business called the Elearning Exchange, which has been used by more than 75 percent of the stockbrokers in the U.S. for continuing education training. Rick also served as President and CEO of Test University, an Internet start-up in the standardized test prep business.

In the 1990s, Rick was an executive with Andersen Consulting, the CIO of the liquor division of Diageo, the Director of Sales and Marketing Services at the E.&J. Gallo Winery, and Manager of Forecasting at Ocean Spray Cranberries.

Rick is working to complete his doctoral dissertation in Educational Leadership and holds a MBA from Babson College and a B.A. in Economics from Michigan State University.

Monetizing Data: Don’t Be Scared by Scarcity

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011

By Lou Ann Sabatier, as posted to PubExec.com

"....about 80% of metrics have no value."

An Interview with Matt Shanahan, Senior VP of Strategy, Scout Analytics

Data science is being adopted everywhere. Advertising Age recently reported that some companies are hiring data visualization experts to help translate data to products and services for consumers. Data has always had a seat at the corporate table, but now there is more of it, often tracked in real time. When it comes to online marketing, publishers can track where site visitors came from, the device they are using, what they are doing on your site, for how long and where they go when they leave. Even more is gleaned by tracking the links and ads they click, the emails they open, the apps they purchase, the content they share. How do we bridge information into market intelligence?

Emedia Vitals refers to Matt Shanahan as the "go to guy" for commentary on publisher revenue models. Here are his thoughts on using data regarding audience loyalty, engagement and monetizing online.


Q. How is information about our customers driving online and digital business decisions?

I read a great book titled How to Measure Anything written by Douglas Hubbard of Hubbard Decision Research in which Hubbard stated that about 80% of metrics have no value. The value of any metric is the amount of uncertainty it removes about decisions with economic consequences. So the 80/20 rule is referring to the fact that most metrics are not used in decisions that affect expense or revenue.

For publishers of online content, this translates to digital metrics that directly measure business model performance to track progress, make decisions and deploy resources. The most basic digital metric is total addressable market, yet few digital publishers are willing to report the maximum size of their online audience and their target for average revenue per user.

Business 101 went out the window when publishers went online. Very rarely do I see a publisher measure their business model performance to the degree they can and should. Instead the focus of analytics is on operational performance: user experience, system performance and click-through rates. Often publishers place more emphasis on operational performance (i.e., efficiency) versus business performance (i.e., effectiveness). The goal should be a unified set of business performance metrics that allows a publisher to make effective decisions for maximizing audience size and monetization.

Q. Can you explain what you mean by a unified set of business performance metrics?

Important data about a publisher's business model is often scattered in silos across the organization. A unified set of business performance metrics includes the integration and correlation of Web analytics, entitlement data [what your customer is entitled to view and read], CRM data and billing data. Each of these systems helps to meet operational objectives of a particular functional group, but because they are siloed, there is not opportunity to optimize business performance overall. The business optimization challenge in digital is connecting the data sets and measuring it day by day.  

Q. What is the one metric that is most powerful and least understood?

Engagement. In digital, engagement is the true measure of market share which I like to think of as attention share. What share of an audience member's time per day does that publisher own? I call this attention economics. Many publishers do not realize that about 20% of their visitors account for 80% of their page views. I believe when monthly uniques are separated from page views, a distorted view of audience size and engagement is created that hurts advertisers and publishers.

 Q. You recently wrote that the digital media survivors will be those that learn how to create scarce engagement of niche audiences rather than commodity page views in exchanges. How do you create scarcity?

Many publishers focus on acquiring traffic because their advertising rate is perceived to have a ceiling. The reality is that advertising sell out is often not low enough and the impression quality is not high enough to raise rates, no matter how sophisticated or unsophisticated the ad serving might be. To create quality impressions and scarcity with your target buyer you must segment your online audience by engagement. Our research studies consistently show that a minority percentage of the audience creates a majority percentage of the impressions.

Let me give you an example. I worked with a B2B publisher who had an advertising sell-through rate of 60% on their site. After reviewing their data for 45 days, the data showed that half of their traffic was not their core target audience, 22% were scrapers (i.e., automated data aggregation bots) and 27% fly-bys (i.e., one and done visitors). The publisher made changes on pricing and packaging of the audience impressions (i.e., delivered page views) with the core audience (fans) for a higher yield which delivered higher quality to his advertisers. Because the scrapers and fly-bys were removed, there was more competition for the advertising inventory which had also increased in quality. Within 45 days, the site went from 60% sell-through to sold out and the rise in CPMs went up more than covered the slight drop in advertising inventory.

Segmentation by engagement is also relevant to monetizing paid content by identifying opportunities for paywalls and license optimization. For publishers with syndicated content, the engagement segmentation can identify whether the syndication costs yield a break-even result or not. The reality is that engagement segmentation enables targeting of audience development, advertising, and paid content strategies to increase revenue and profits of the business model. 

Q. Who has responsibility for this within a company?

Whoever owns the P & L. In a small company most likely the owner and in the bigger companies it is divisional. The challenge for the P&L owner is sourcing the know-how and embedding the best practices in the organization. A publisher can acquire this knowledge by hiring employees with experience in this area, from a services firm or a consultant but rarely does the knowledge exist inside—otherwise it would already be in use.

Q. What keeps you up at night?

Thinking about customer online revenue streams.

Take-away:
Are you tracking metrics that matter to optimize your business model performance online or are they used for management show and tell meetings?

Bio:
Matt Shanahan, senior vice president of strategy at Scout Analytics, is relatively new to the information and media world. Shanahan is, by training, an electrical engineer from the University of Washington, and he spent much of his career consulting for big businesses in the fields of aerospace and finance. In 1994, he jumped from the management consulting firm of Andersen Consulting to a document management software start-up called Documentum. While at Documentum, he specialized in new market development and specifically in how organizations adopt new technology and new business practices. In 2008, he joined a Seattle-area firm called Scout Analytics and was soon struck by an anomaly of online media: the yawning maw that separates the size of audiences from the level of engagement those readers and viewers demonstrate. Ever since, Matt has been working with publishers to better model and monetize their online audience.

A Mission to Innovate

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

By Lou Ann Sabatier, as posted to PubExec.com

“In the last decade, Christianity Today International moved the needle for online revenue from zero to 40% contribution to gross corporate revenues.”

An Interview with Cory Whitehead, Director of Brand & Digital Marketing, Christianity Today International

CDS Global published a “client spotlight” in their January 2011 Perspectives that piqued my interest. They reported on the formation of a Marketing Enrichment Group at Christianity Today International [CTI] to foster in-house training, collaboration across various marketing teams, and idea germination. I had a sense this was more than “centralized” marketing and a conversation with Cory Whitehead confirmed that and something else; this company has been innovating since day one.

Q. How did CTI start?

In 1956 Billy Graham had a vision to start one publication which would address issues of the day confronting the church with high quality journalism and reach all 200,000 pastors in the U.S. With the help of friends and Board of Directors, a non-profit organization was created to launch Christianity Today and send it free to the intended audience.

In the mid 1970s the Board hired Harold Myra as President and Publisher and gave him a mandate to bring the magazine to financial health while maintaining the vision of founder Billy Graham. Myra hired Paul Robbins soon after to oversee business and finance for the company and one of their first actions was to change the business model from free distribution to paid subscriptions. After giving away content for 20 years, they began charging for it.

Q. When did the company expand beyond publishing one title?

Five years after moving CT to paid circulation, around 1980, they launched a business title called Leadership Journal which focused on practical management for ministry.

Several other print publications were added in the 80s and 90s—up to 14 publications at its peak—content for Christian men, women, parents, couples, teens, and niche publications like Christian History  and Books & Culture

The next expansion was in 1994 when Christianity Today became one of the top 10 content providers on all of AOL.This was followed two years later by the launch of ChristianityOnline.com in 1996 which soon became self-sustaining with online advertising sales.

And in 1999 Myra and Robbins launched a companion site to Leadership Journal (PreachToday.com), a paid content database of sermon illustrations. Pretty quickly this site became self-sustaining.

 Q. Why do you think the leadership team of Myra and Robbins was forward-thinking and successful in building out their vision?

The company has always been focused on market research and learning what the audience needs, even if they had to do some of the original research on a shoestring budget.

[“The research led them to foster an environment of dialogue with readers versus a monologue” according to Scott Bolinder, former EVP/Publisher of Zondervan and former CTI Vice President as reported by CTI in 2007.]

To respond to research findings and trends, they created a “laboratory department” called Resources or Ancillary Products in 1999 comprised of a small team of people, based in a different building. This group was given the capital, staff and time to develop a cutting edge product, preachingtoday.com. The birth of this site was not easy. The database that it was built on was obsolete and had to be moved onto another platform. The first year, payment processing was manual…in notebooks, very rudimentary.

Ten years ago the revenue mix was 50% circ/50% advertising in print. In the last decade CTI moved the needle for online revenue from zero to about 40% contribution to gross corporate revenues and even higher in net revenue, because costs are lower.

Q. Tell me about the Marketing Enrichment Group at CTI

The impetus for the MEG was in 2007 with the senior leadership transition. When Myra and Robbins retired after serving the company for 30 years, CTI restructured from brand silos into team based audience groups. Three of those exist today:

• Christianity Today-thought-leaders (CTmag, Books & Culture)
• Church Leadership
• Church Ministry-small groups, women

Each team consisted of Editors/Marketers/Designers. This reorganization meant that there is no cross-pollination between teams. MEG fills that gap.

Q. How does MEG work with the teams?

We don’t want MEG to be a burden that gives people more work as they are stretched thin. We want it to be an exchange of ideas, sharing best practices and encouragement. One marketer or team has tested something that worked or bombed and they can share that with rest of group. MEG is not focused on development of new products, but rather developing people and their tactics.

We hold monthly meetings focused on leadership training, continuing education, and exchanging ideas. These can be led by staff or outside speakers. And we hold an off-site once a year. Brainstorming happens at our monthly happy hour meeting in a coffee shop, a park, etc. Each marketer chooses a specialization which they then embrace and share what they have learned ongoing with the group. Last, we keep an internal marketing blog where all are encouraged to share insights and ideas.

Q. There is a history of successful launches at CTI. How do launches get birthed today?

Launches come out of each of the three media groups. The MEG has innovated as well with brand extensions. They led the testing with online contests, webinars, social media, etc.

Q. What is CTI doing with mobile technology, digital editions and social media?

There is a task force for new media development within the company. We are transitioning some content to ebooks. In 2010 we developed our first iPhone app. We are getting more mobile friendly and developing more apps. We have five digital edition pubs—two are replicas of the print and three publications are digital only, two free and one paid.

Social media is another distribution method of content. Some of our brands have lively conversations on Facebook and Twitter. The immediacy of the feedback and conversation is invaluable and it is a strong traffic generator.

Q. How does CTI measure success in 2011?

First, we have stayed true to our original mission, to give a voice to all sides—balance—but above all, there is recognition and respect. Our voice is civil. No fighting or headline grabbing. Second, we look at how we are impacting churches not only in North America, but worldwide as we have expanded overseas in the last decade. And last, we strive to be financially healthy. We remain non-profit to focus on our mission and ministry, but also strive to be self-sustaining and any profits go back into the business. [The company generated gross revenue of 15 million in 2010.]

Q. What keeps you up at night?

A big responsibility that we have as an organization right now is communicating who we are and why we are unique, especially as we have transitioned back to our core.

Several new products were launched in the '80s and '90s; we were publishing up to 14 print magazines. After 2000 we entered the online space, some sold, some moved online, some shut down. There has been a perfect storm due to the economy and CTI has gone back to the core market—church and thought-leaders. We made tough decisions to move out of the consumer market. There has been re-deployment and now rebranding.

In the past, we referred to ourselves as the “quiet” company. We now want and need to help people understand our place within the evangelical church.

Take-away:

Several note-worthy items surface out of this conversation about CTI. The company, since its founding, has made wise hiring choices at the “top” and they seem to have let leaders lead. Myra and Robbins believed in investing in the development of their employees and listening to their audience; taking the pulse often and then being nimble in responding to findings. This style of management continues today.

CTI has not been afraid to take risks. Convert from free to paid after 20 years? Make money and break even online in 1996? Charge for content in 1999 and do it successfully. Ten years later many in our field are debating the merits of all these actions. Perhaps we should debate our value proposition instead?

Bio

Cory Whitehead joined Christianity Today in June 2000 as the non-profit organization was starting a transition from primarily a print magazine publisher to a multimedia ministry. CTI now includes 6 print publications, 3 digital-only publications, and 8 paid-content websites that together reach over 2.5 million Christian leaders every month. Whitehead has served in the areas of marketing and new product development during his career, and is now the Director of Brand and Digital Marketing and co-leads the Marketing Enrichment Group.

Lighting Up A Brand: John Maisel on the Success of Electrical Contractor Magazine

Monday, April 25th, 2011

By Lou Ann Sabatier, as posted to PubExec.com

"Nothing works in our society without electricity and the generation, distribution, and management of that energy will determine the future of our nation."

An Interview with John Maisel, Publisher, Electrical Contractor Magazine

The National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA) is the oldest (Circa 1901) largest and most successful trade association serving the $130B Electrical Contracting Industry. NECA membership represents over 60% of total industry dollar volume. Electrical Contractor magazine is the association's flagship publication, published since 1939. The EC brand leads its market in every measurable category: circulation, editorial quality/quantity, readership, preference and industry research/support services.

Sabatier: Tell me about the relationship between NECA and Electrical Contractor.

John Maisel: EC is a controlled circulation publication that is owned by the National Electrical Contractors Association. Our circ is over 85,000 electrical contractors throughout the Americas. Going back 50 years written into the NECA bylaws is a mandate that they publish on a regular basis a periodical that is of formative value to every electrical contractor in the U.S., regardless of affiliation with NECA. That is somewhat unique among trade associations. A good deal of the education material that the association creates/curates is available to the general contractor market. For example, Electri-International, NECA's foundation endowed with over $20 million dollars provides research materials of interest to the entire electrical contracting industry. That theme runs through a lot of what NECA does. We expand and maximize the electrical contractor in the total economic sphere. 

Sabatier: So do you refer to EC as an association publication, a trade publication or both?

Maisel: Both

Sabatier: Electrical Contractor seems to get a lot of press. Why is that?

Maisel: The industry that this brand serves is undergoing dramatic paradigm shifts that directly affect the future of the industry. The two primary drivers are the changing role from an electrical contractor being a purchaser/buyer/installer to being an active participant in the design specification process. Coupled with that, the scope of EC activity now includes more sophisticated integrated building systems. Our brand, by investing in research to indentify these trends and changes, has enabled us to respond editorially, across many channels. This provides tremendous value to our readers, to our staff and to our suppliers.

Sabatier: What is your investment in research?

Maisel: We invest six figures annually on research for EC. The old philosopher Yogi Berra allegedly said "If you don't know where you are going, chances are, you end up some place else." Over the past 43 years in trade publishing [Lebhar-Friedman, McGraw-Hill, Cahners and BPI] I have witnessed far too many brands that achieved the pinnacle of excellence only to assume that they could not fall and they lost sight of their customer.

Sabatier: How has EC responded to the digital age?

Maisel: While I am a firm believer in the future of traditional print media, especially in B2B, I also realize that as the amount of information has grown hundred-fold, that we need to synergistically incorporate the latest in digital media with our traditional print media. We have a successful site in ecmag.com. Two and half years ago we generated 300,000 page views per month and now we generate 1.6 million a month with an average viewer time over 20 minutes. We also use email, webinars, e-newsletters, social media and we are working on our tablet format. 

Sabatier: Has the revenue mix changed as you expanded channels?

Maisel: Print is dominant (85%), but each of our electronic media has shown triple digit growth year over year.

Sabatier: You seem to have confidence about when and what to invest in research. Based on your longevity in trade publishing, tell me how your approach investing in technology and digital products. For example, you don't have a digital edition. What determines where you go and when with new media?

Maisel: We asked our audience about preferred method of receiving our content and 85% prefer print. They use the website to complement and fill additional information needs. They don't read digital so we don't have a digital magazine. Research has led us to take a serious look at tablets because they are starting to be used by EC's. There are times we give our audience things they don't ask for or know they need. But remember my business model is 100% advertising. If my reader isn't using digital, then my advertiser does not want to be there. No monetization.

Sabatier: What is a challenge your brand has faced and successfully met in the last year and what can we learn from it?

Maisel: The biggest challenge I face as a publisher is to convince our advertising base of the dramatically changed role of our audience and how those changes affect their bottom line. Basically, we are pulling our industry along. We are addressing topics of emerging technologies and market opportunities. Nothing works in our society without electricity and the generation, distribution, and management of that energy will determine the future of our nation.

Sabatier: In closing, what keeps you up at night?

Maisel: Am I missing something competitively in the industry, with my audience or how I manage this business?

Take-away:

How would you describe your brand: leading, tracking, or following?Check your budget. How much do you invest in research?

John Maisel Bio

John W. Maisel has been the Publisher of Electrical Contractor Magazine for the past 10 years. His B-to-B publishing experience of over 40 years includes working at Lebhar Friedman, McGraw-Hill, Cahners and BPI in advertising sales, sales management, publisher and group publisher positions. Through both good and challenging times, he has delivered consistent patterns of growth in revenue and profit. At Electrical Contractor, he has led several award winning re-designs and launch of both print and digital products, while consistently producing an above budget bottom line.

The Future of Facebook: Moving from Personal Connections to Business

Monday, April 4th, 2011

Guest blog: Grant Sabatier

You can now migrate your personal profile into a page. Although it is hardly revolutionary, it was an interesting step for Facebook. This means that you will have to trade all of your friends for likes if you opt for the change.

But be careful before you decide to change your personal profile into a page, because you can never go back. Well at least not for now.  The move is in response to popular people on Facebook who have reached the 5,000 Facebook friend limit. But it’s an interesting move because many popular people have already created pages for themselves. Why create the formal ability to make the shift and openly publicize it?

Is Facebook becoming more about promoting brands than connecting with friends? Do they now want people to be brands too? The world’s largest social network was built on creating connections between people. Your friends were the people you knew or the ones you had at least met in person. But it seems Facebook is starting to stray from its roots. Now that the world of business has embraced Facebook as a core-marketing vehicle, Facebook seems to be shifting towards them. If people start abandoning their profiles for pages, all that will be left are a bunch of people who 'like' you.

It makes you wonder if you want to be connected to a bunch of your friends or people who like you. Although it’s merely semantics, it is definitely something to think about as social networks continue to grow and evolve. Important questions to consider are: What is the purpose of your Facebook page? What does a “Like” mean to you? And most importantly, what do your connections mean?

Mediabistro founder Laurel Touby to receive 2011 Exceptional Woman in Publishing Award

Saturday, February 19th, 2011

The Exceptional Woman in Publishing Award recipient for 2011 is Laurel Touby, founder and senior vice president of mediabistro.com. The annual award is given to a woman in publishing who has achieved a high standard of professional excellence, has made extraordinary contributions to the publishing industry as a whole, and consistently offers guidance to others so they too may become outspoken leaders.

Touby is the thirteenth recipient of the EWIP award and joins a distinguished list of women, including Gloria Steinem, Ardie and Marie Rodale, Dorothy Kalins, and Katrina vanden Heuvel. The EWIP president will present Laurel Touby with the award at the Women’s Leadership Conference luncheon on February 25, 2011. http://bit.ly/hf2Xvg

Woman and the Machine: Publishing, Technology, and the Female Brain, Exceptional Women in Publishing’s third annual Women’s Leadership Conference is hosted by Barbara Newton, President of Sunset Publishing.  Sessions presented by over thirty innovative entrepreneurs, print and online journalists, and creative and business leaders from a variety of publishing, media, and technology enterprises will explore the nearly ubiquitous use of technology and its impact on our work, products, lives, and even our brains. Attendees will have an opportunity to demo the latest digital devices in the Demo Lounge.

City Club of San Francisco
155 Sansome Street, 11th floor [8am-5:30pm]
San Francisco, CA

New Ways to Get Paid for Your Web and Mobile Content

Monday, February 14th, 2011

Bob Atkinson, Senior Technology Consultant

It seems that every day the ever-changing 3-D puzzle publishers face getting their content into mobile-device editions and, more importantly, trying to make money for both website and mobile edition content gets more complicated.

Predictably, there's a rapidly-evolving ecosystem of new developers, software or cloud-based services that promise to solve all your problems.  Let's have a look at a few of these and how they fit into the market …

But first, a little important background to set the scene.

Only the top 10% highest-visited publisher sites make significant ad income, so most newspaper and magazine publishers have debated various user-pay models over the past decade. The vast majority of their sites, however, are still free to users. They're afraid to lose the visitors and ad impressions they already get if they charge for their content.

The most common website pay model is still a 'hard paywall', where 20% or less of the site content is available until you've signed up for a paid account, typically billed monthly or annually to a credit card. Every time you visit the site you log in to see the full content. Sites implementing this type of pay model will normally see a huge drop (often 90% or more) in visitors and ad impressions beyond your top page over the month or two after the wall is running, then slowly building a paid audience after that, depending on content popularity.

A newer and more popular model uses a softer 'metered' approach instead of a hard wall. With this model, the site tracks the total number of content items (stories, videos, blogs, etc.) every user consumes, and, only after a certain number of items (usually measured in total items consumed in all visits across a week or a month, as tracked by cookie files on the user's computer) the user is required to create an ongoing monthly account with a credit card to access more. That means that any user can visit the site and look at content for free indefinitely, as long as he/she does not exceed the weekly or monthly maximum. Casual or 'fly-by' visitors following a link to a particular item on your site will never even see the pay request. With the metered approach you don't see the huge drop in overall visitors or ad impressions.

As you can imagine, only a small fraction of visitors – your most enthusiastic, frequent and loyal audience – will likely go for either pay model. The metered approach casts a wider net, likely converting your top 15-20% of frequent visitors into paying customers across the first year, compared to the 4-7% for a hard paywall approach. The jury is still out as to which method is the most lucrative at the end of the day – the hard paywall maximizes income from a small highly-faithful audience segment at the expense of total ad impressions, while the metered approach tries to balance the two income sources.  With either method, the more popular and unique content you have, the higher your conversion rates will be. Sites with highly-specialized industry-specific content (law, medicine, business, etc.) and those with exclusive content by popular contributors will do best with either approach. As always, content is king – on paper, TV, or on the web.

Either pay model can be implemented with eCommerce software added to your web server (anywhere from $1,000 to $20,000, based on features) or by using a cloud-based web eCommerce service that handles all your tracking, user account and purchase functions in the background for a commission (10% to 20%).

Recently, two other possible pay models have gained traction as well …

The first is the 'á la carte', method, where, over and above certain free content items on your site, the visitor can pay for specific items, one at a time, typically for anything from five cents up to 50 cents. It's never been cost-efficient to do micro-purchases like this on websites because the user time & effort involved plus fixed transaction costs were far too high.  Recently some web-based services have appeared that make it fast and cost-efficient to sell your content an item at a time.  Typically, these systems sign up publishers' and blog sites on one side and sell monthly or annual member accounts to the public on the other.

Members (with desktop, laptop or mobile-device browsers) can visit any of the sites and access content items, one at a time, by clicking on a little icon at the top of the article. The service handles the item billing for a commission and reports on monthly viewer analytics to their sites. For the website, it's fast and free (or cheap) to implement. For the audience, a single account allows them to instantly access and pay for just the content they want across many paid sites.

For an example of this sort of service, have a look at Cleeng (http://cleeng.com), a recent entry to the business. They offer free plug-ins to quickly implement their service on sites using popular CMS systems like Drupal, Joomla, WordPress and BrightCove, and charge anywhere from 20-25% commission on transactions.

A key consideration when looking at any of these services is whether the service has enough of a critical mass of sites to attract audience accounts in large numbers.

A second approach is the upcoming wave of pay-access content aggregators. These  are available to the public as paid news or entertainment websites and/or mobile apps, and they sign up contributing sites in the same way as news syndicators like AP. You're paid every time someone accesses one of your items. 

Among the most promising of these are Google's upcoming NewsPass system (a paid version of their popular Google News site with a probable Android app to follow), Next Issue Media (http://nextissuemedia.com/index.php) and OnGo (see: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-with-social-news-site-ongo-aggregation-and-paywalls-are-brought-togethe/). Apple are also quietly shopping an as-yet-unannounced paid news app to publishers as well. Little detail is available so far, but it may be a viable iOS alternative, given Apple's ever-changing (and tightening) rules for publishers' own apps in the App Store.

Getting Your Digital Edition Right

Monday, January 10th, 2011

Getting Your Digital Edition Right

Bob Atkinson, Senior Technology Consultant

If you're a magazine or newspaper publisher, we'll assume you already have a web site to accompany your print edition(s) and perhaps part of that site requires a free or paid subscription. And, if you're like 90% of publications worldwide, you're not making nearly as much money on your web site as you'd like.  Not to mention tightening ad sales across the board.

And now you've had a year of pundits telling you that mobile will be the salvation of the business.

Sound familiar?

Over the past year, every newspaper and magazine client I've talked with is trying to negotiate the maze of getting a digital / mobile edition (DME) of their product to market. And, over that time, lots of digital editions have appeared – and lots of mistakes have been made in the rush to market.

A DME is a good way to build your readership and your brand and actually make some money along the way – if you get it right. That means understanding where the real business model is – not just the 24/7 hype machine. And it means negotiating the interlocking technologies needed to make it all work.

Getting it right (and getting it done cost-effectively) involves answering a structured series of questions along the way …

Pick your targets

What mobile devices will your DME appear on? The marketplace for mobile editions breaks down into smartphones (mobile phones capable of accessing the web and downloading add-on apps) and the much newer mobile tablet devices getting all the press lately.  At this point, the smartphones, running under a dozen different software operating systems, outnumber the mobile tablets 25 to 1. And, despite hot sales numbers in the tablet segment (still utterly dominated by Apple's iPad), this ratio will not change much for the next couple of years.  So, by the numbers, your key target is the smartphone. But if you just go by the numbers you're making one of those mistakes I mentioned above.

The difference is the quality of the user experience. Reading a story on a smartphone screen – smaller than a playing card, regardless of its pixel resolution – is not a great way to view magazine or newspaper content, even with pinch-zoom capabilities. Although more expensive, a mobile tablet with a 7" to 10" screen is a much better experience. That's one reason why tablet sales (about 16 million in 2010, 95% of which were iPads) is projected to jump to about 70 million in 2011, primarily split between Apple's iPad and perhaps a half-dozen leading tablets running Google's Android 3 OS. (The other seventy or so Android tablets appearing in 2011 will stand little chance – Blackberry's PlayBook, however, running RIM's new QNX software, will be a strong third contender.)

The biggest single factor in how the tablet market share war between Apple, Android's licensed manufacturers and Blackberry will unfold is the quality of software developers each draws and maintains.

At this point, the smart money is to support both device types – smartphones and tablets – but customize your product to support the best features of each platform. And, the truth is, that means two different DME products, delivered on the fly. But it can be done a lot easier than you'd think.

What's your content strategy?

While mobile devices offer different form-factor advantages than either print or a desktop/laptop web site, you'll find it will take more than that to build significant mobile sales. A big part of it is platform-specific content. The best publication websites offer unique and more-frequently updated content than print editions, and mobile versions need to go that extra mile as well, over and above both the print and web editions.

And, as with your main web site, you'll need to decide if there's a pay wall for your mobile edition, and just where in the content that wall is.

What's your mobile business model?

Building your brand and readership is nice, but can you actually make money on the mobile edition? With ads? With issue or subscription sales? Selling on your web site or in an app store? Black magic?

The short answer is yes you can make money, using a careful combination of a 'freemium' price model, in-app upgrades and mobile network ads.

The trick is the balance between these – and some cost-effective product marketing.

What's Your Technology Mix?

Typically, a publication DME is a specialized web site or a custom reader application that's driven by live content and ad streams in the background. (Many of these apps can save these streams onto your device when the app is opened, allowing you to read the content later, even without a net connection.) You can develop your app entirely in-house (almost never a good idea), with a third-party app developer (a flexible but often expensive approach) or by licensing an existing publication app shell platform.

Here the decision breaks down into three questions. First, how well does the app you're planning to build or license take advantage of the different strengths of both smartphones and tablets?

Second, how well does it connect with your current print and web site production workflows? Remember, you'll be generating all of the mobile content every day from now on, so the fewer steps needed to re-purpose your content for mobile the better.

Third, how well does your proposed mobile solution connect with both the ad networks and any web analytics services you already use?  Both will be important.

Finally, what does it all cost to get running and to keep running? And how long will it take to get your product out there?

As with most things, it'll quite often cost more than you were initially told, including the hidden costs of staff training and app store commissions. And, of course, it will take a little longer than you'd like, especially when you allow enough time for proper testing and quality control.

Here's the bottom line – yes, you CAN do it, and even make money and build your brand & readership with your DME.  The trick is not jumping into the frenzy without asking some careful questions to your own team and to potential mobile partners at the very beginning.

This is an area we've focused on with clients for some time. If you think we can help, feel free to contact us anytime and we'll help you navigate that maze.

Rethink Search Strategy…Social Media Optimization

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

For the past four years our industry has been talking about collective reporting, expression, and reflection. What is social media doing? And now it has gotten even more interesting. Topic: social media optimization vs. search engine optimization. Example: Facebook and Bing partnering-social media and search. (Read more on the topic at digitalquarters.net and paidcontent.org).

Facebook “like” and “Follow Me on Twitter” buttons are everywhere. LinkedIn has millions of members. Now the likes can be pointed toward search. Spreading messages (personal or for business) across social media isn't a novelty anymore, it's essential. Thousands are using Facebook as a news interface to their favorite sources. Not being a part of the collective online voice is like having no voice at all. Stories are reported almost instantaneously from the scene through photos posted on Facebook, tweets, and countless emerging social media services.

People follow Twitter and Facebook feeds to see what is going on in the world. If they have the right kind of friends or enough of them (I think over 250 is the tipping point from naïve to informed), by the end of the day they know what's happened. If they are savvy social media users, they are checking updates on a computer or phone at work, school, or in transit. Many people develop networks geared towards gathering industry specific, location based, or topical news from experts or passionate commentators. For example, I am into publishing and media trends so I follow publications like @folio, @mashable, and @adage.

Social media optimization is about creating good content for the audience. Audiences value content, not keywords. Stories that matter spread like fire. The ones that don't fade away. At the end of the day it’s about finding stories, resources and people that are interesting and mean something to you, personal or business. Social media makes this customization possible and lets you keep your hand on the pulse of your interests. Publishing was built on transparency, insight, and a really good story. Now there are millions being told every second of the day. And anyone can read them at the touch of a button. How do you harness the power? User knowledge vs. algorithms.

Follow me on twitter @louannsabatier to join my conversation.

Emerging Analytics for Publishers

Monday, October 18th, 2010

A content creator assesses audience needs and determines where and how to create and curate content to serve that audience.  A consultant is charged with similar tasks for clients and prospects. There is a breadth of information circulating about the wisdom, viability and technique for monetizing content online. One of the better resources I have found to be credible with higher level thinking that can be bridged to every day practice is Scout Analytics. Based in Washington state, this behavioral analytics company offers tools that help publishers maximize the value of visitors online.  They have moved the dial beyond intuition and experience.

The following Scott Analytics post presents five types of pay points for the metered model of charging for content with explanations and case studies for each over a period of blog posts.

• High demand
• Premium content 
• Premium services 
• Time-based 
• Location-based

This is my resource pick of the month.

When was your last website usability checkup?

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

As you ponder how to continue to improve your website, a great tool to guide your time and investment is a usability test. 

Usability testing is not new (been around since 1981) and it is not market research. It is a systematic observation of visitors using your site to determine what they want to do on the site and to improve their ability to complete those tasks. Mobile apps make it easier for people to easily accomplish tasks, putting more pressure on your site to do the same. 

The first test is baseline and future tests (ad hoc or related to any type of site improvement and/or redesign) can be compared to baseline. Wikipedia defines the four goals of usability testing as follows: 

Efficiency:  How much time and how many steps does it require to complete basic tasks on the site? 

Accuracy:  How many mistakes were made and are they recoverable? 

Recall:  How much does the visitor remember after a period of non-use? 

Emotional response:  How does the visitor feel about the tasks completed? Would they recommend your site to others? 
 

An interesting resource resides on this University of Texas website: http://www.utexas.edu/learn/usability/index.html 

If you want to learn more about usability tests, contact us.

Options for Your Digital Edition

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

This post was written by Bob Atkinson, our Senior Technology Consultant who has over 25 years experience in graphic arts / publishing & new media industries.  

 
Electronic editions are moving into the publishing mainstream and publishers big and small are rushing to move their content into the digital space. But before you rush in, you need to understand the options and issues … 
 
For the widest audience potential, your digital edition should run on Windows and Mac desktop/laptop computers, as well as smart mobile devices using the Android and Apple (iOS) operating systems. Other smart mobile platforms (BlackBerry, Nokia/Symbian and Palm/HP WebOS) are nice additions as well, but remember that different mobile platforms still require separate versions, especially if you want a lot of digital 'extras'.  
 
A basic digital edition of a publication is a recreation of the print edition done as a PDF file, usually with some form of copy-protection added. This simple approach to getting your publication in electronic format is limited in rich media, interactivity or live-updated content across the web. Sometimes basic versions are packaged in a Flash-based reader shell (i.e.: NxtBook), which can offer added interactivity or other capabilities.  
 
The Pros?  It's the least expensive approach and offers the widest compatibility (but watch out for Flash-based packages if the smart mobile audience is important to you, since Apple has prohibited Flash on its mobile devices and Flash on Android is still a bit iffy). Many newspapers and smaller magazines use this solution. 
 
The Cons? It's very limited in terms of what you (or your advertisers) can add for interactivity, web connectivity or rich media. It's also screen-size specific, so if you build it for a desktop/laptop audience (perhaps 800x1000 pixel screen size) it's tedious for smart phone users with small screens to use -- lots of panning and zooming. Also, if you want text-based search capabilities you'll need to jump some hoops in the development process. 
 
Coming up a level, the ePub and Kindle/MobiPocket formats can, with appropriate cheap or free software, run on almost all desktops/laptops, eReaders (Kindle, Sony Reader, Nook, etc.) and smart mobile devices (Android, Apple iOS, BlackBerry, Nokia, etc.).  
 
The Pros?  It also has limited rich-media / interactive capabilities, but it's screen-size independent, re-rendering / reflowing the pages on the fly, based on screen size and orientation (portrait/landscape). DRM/piracy protection is built in, fonts are user-resizable, text-based search is standard and there are a number of online stores to sell / distribute your product. Book, directory and industry report publishers are the biggest users of this method. 
 
The Cons? Converting files meant for print publishing to ePub and MobiPocket format can be fairly tricky. There are numerous free or cheap conversion programs and web-based services that promise to painlessly convert InDesign or PDF files to ePub or MobiPocket, but 90% of the time you'll need to fix bugs that crop up in the converted file, which can be very time-consuming. It's often best to find a company that specializes in this conversion process and let them handle it. so you'll need to budget for their services. 
 
The top level is to actually develop a self-running 'app' with a mix of built-in content and functions and live-updated web content windows. For desktop/laptop computers, this can be a downloadable self-running Flash or Adobe AIR program. For mobile platforms you'll need to build apps for iOS and Android separately. iOS-based devices – Apple's iPhone and iPad – are getting a lot of media attention these days, but Google's Android OS is coming on strong, with smartphone and tablet products from over 40 companies due in the next six months. 
 
The Pros?  You (and your advertisers) can put almost anything you want in an app of this sort – rich media and interactivity, custom user interfaces, direct-response surveys and ads, commenting and much more. This is the format used by many large publications – Sports Illustrated, Time, People, Wired, etc. – and can produce truly impressive results. 
 
The Cons? Developing these apps, whether for Flash, AIR or iOS/Android mobile devices is a complex and technical process. It's NOT something you'd want to tackle with the normal publisher's team of writers, designers and pre-press/page layout people. The programming skills needed are not found in most IT departments either. Your best bet is to find an external technical developer with solid app development experience to work with you on producing your app editions. Also bear in mind that mobile apps are usually sold or distributed through app stores, so plan on a little red tape and some time to get your mobile product available to the public. 
 
Finally, think of your business model.   Is this something you give away to get your message and brand out there?  Will you sell it? (Typical digital edition pricing ranges from 50% to 60% of the single-copy print price.) Will you offer it free or at a discounted price to your print subscribers? Will you sell advertising into it, either with your own sales people or through an ad network (Apple's iPad, AdMob, Google AdSense, etc.) How will you promote it?  Getting it noticed and reviewed takes some time and effort, especially if your brand is not highly-visible. 
 
Going digital is the future of the publishing business. Websites for all publications is a given, but full electronic editions are the next step in the evolution of the business. Just plan carefully.

Digital Content: Seven Questions

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

• Is your digital content strategy delivering results?
• How do your digital content offerings compare to the competitive marketplace?
• Do you have the correct portfolio mix of digital content and services?
• How can you better monetize your digital content offerings?
• Are your digital content offerings appropriately positioned and priced?
• What best practices can you learn from the competitive marketplace?
• How do consumer, business, technology, and content trends stretch us to expand our view of what publishing is and deliver to our intended audience?

Seven Game-Changing Steps to Position for Recovery

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Most economists say the worst of the recession is behind us, but they stress that recovery is going to be slow and extremely difficult. The GDP grew 3.5% this past quarter and consumers are spending money again. But the recession has changed the attitudes of these consumers, who are now demanding more and better content for their money.

Although many companies won’t survive the journey over the mountain, it is noted that the recession has created a level playing field for many organizations. Ultimately this is an opportune time for a company that wants to gain ground and compete at a level they never imagined pre-recession. Over the next three months I will examine seven key steps to help position your company for recovery and expand your market share. The following is a brief summary of each step.

Assess Performance

Before you cut more costs, look at your pre-existing business strategy and assess your current position. Focus on where you are now and be prepared to build a plan on your foundation. Pay special attention to core activities and how you can improve on them. Do you have a defined vision for the future? And how do you communicate a value proposition to your customers?

Innovate

Don’t waste the crisis. Involve everyone on your team; in a recession, everyone is a marketer. Can you accept new ways of thinking and abandon crutches of previous years? What is something you have always wanted to try? Companies that innovate are going to have an advantage as they move out of the recession period.

Protect Profits

Protect your profits by improving competitive tracking, price testing, and trying to maximize revenue. And it is a priority to identify and nurture the customer segments that can lead you through recovery.

Revenue Diversification

Construct a detailed picture of your new and loyal customer. Make sure you focus on how new customers find you product and look at what they are buying. If you have the pulse of your customer, this can lead you to create new products and services. Diversified revenue spreads your risk.

Partnering

To reduce costs and expand opportunities, look to partner for business development, shared learning, and marketing needs. When looking for a partner, evaluate complementary competencies, how they can help minimize costs, and create other business opportunities.

Staff Hiring and Retraining

Many businesses today require a smaller, more flexible work force with diverse skills. Smart staffing decisions will save your business and help it grow during the recovery. Make sure you keep long-term staff and positive people on-board to boost morale. Also offer training and career growth opportunities to your entire staff.

Accountability with Customers

See your business as your customers do…the solution to a problem or problems. Take their pulse and measure your success.

In closing, businesses that embrace these practices can develop new revenue, effectively manage resources, develop a stronger team, and position themselves for strong growth moving forward. Each of the seven steps will be examined in greater detail in our bi-weekly blog/newsletter.

If you would like more information about this topic, contact us at http://www.sabatierconsulting.com for more information.

Assessing Performance - The First Step to Position for Recovery

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

Over the next three months I am going to analyze the “Seven Game-Changing Steps to Position for Recovery.” The first step is to assess your publications past and current performance. In order to establish a plan for the recovery, it is important to first understand where you are. Now is the perfect time to step back and rigorously analyze your advertising sales strategy, your circulation numbers, and the performance of your staff.

Asking simple questions like, “How have things changed in the past year, three years, five years?” and “What does our company data really mean?” will give you a clear picture of where you are. Once you have determined the strength of your foundation, it is important to ask three key questions as you build a plan for the recovery.

How do you improve your core activities?

The core activities are the building blocks of your business. One of the biggest mistakes many publications make is to not examine their core offerings and operations. Often there is a routine that many companies get stuck in and continue to count on. This is a new age and things have changed dramatically. Although it is important to understand your core, by not questioning it and evaluating every element of its performance, you risk falling behind and missing your chance for recovery.

Take a look at your mission, your readers, and your advertisers to see how you can improve on your core activities moving forward. What do you do well? What needs work? By focusing on improving your core and not just resting on your routine, you will strengthen your potential for growth and success.

Do you have a defined vision for the future?

Take the time to create a planning committee of key members of your publication and allow everyone company wide to make suggestions for content and business operation improvements. Once you have built a team, make sure everyone stays on the same page as you move forward through a documented plan.

Even though many publications have big plans for the future, there is often a lack of communication between decision makers. It is more important now than ever before to have a “defined” vision for the future. Make it clear, build it on your core products, and make sure everyone involved stays informed and are held accountable for their positions.

How do you communicate a value proposition to your customers?

Today’s readers want more than a free umbrella, old news, and a gift subscription rate. While planning for the recovery, it is essential that you find creative ways to communicate a value proposition to your customers. Most of them have heard all of the “pitches” and they are use to turning an eye to traditional forms of marketing. Figure out something new to offer them and most importantly live up to your promises. More content. Better content. Real-time delivery. These are all things readers are demanding and if you can’t give it to them, they will move on. Another publication is competing for the same readers and might be cheaper, more accessible, and more creative than you. Be prepared to offer something extra and make it count.

Your ability to communicate a value proposition to your customers is integral in order to maintain and grow your readership. If you fall short, you will the opportunity for a new reader or in many cases, keeping the ones you have.

In the next post I will focus on how to innovate and move forward creatively in your recovery process. The most creative and forward thinking publications are going to best meet the dynamic and increasingly demanding needs of readers.

If you would like more information on this topic or have another publishing question, contact me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or visit our website and http://www.sabatierconsulting.com.

How fast does a new word move on the web?

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Guest post: Senior Consultant Ed Fitzelle 

It’s no fun being a celebrity these days.  Keeping your name and picture in the headlines is not easy.  There is one sure fire way, however, to get ink, and that is to bear children or to adopt from a third world country.  Like over-sized handbags, lavish jewelry, and goofy hats, the baby bump is a sure fire way for a star to get noticed between films. 

For men, the question of how good of a celebrity father you are is cause for a paroxysm of coverage, especially if the relationship that originally sponsored the offspring has broken up or is on rocky ground.  Good is to be seen with lots of kids climbing all over you at some public function, better is to be seen heading to court with your lawyers in tow to assert your parental rights, and best is to bring the kid from the broken relationship to dinner with your new love interest.  Let’s just say that children in Hollywood, Washington, and New York have become accoutrements or very noticeable accessories for the people who show up regularly on the gossip shows.

Now to the point of this blog.  We aren’t just rambling on about the ethical or moral implications of this adoption of kid power by the power elite.  It would take someone with a far higher moral calling than me to do that.  The purpose here is not to express indignation, but to run a scientific experiment to test how a word can get diffused through the web.

Writers for tabloids and celeb mags love to coin words for shorthand references to celebrities and their lives.  Think of Branjelina or TomKat.  In that spirit then, we are offering up two coinages that we think will be quickly adopted by the working celeb press and offer them gratis for their use:

1. “ACCOUTREMENFANTS”  This term describes children acquired for headline purposes whether through natural causes like all the little kids appearing after photos of every stage of pregnancy by the mom-to-be have appeared at every supermarket checkout counter in the universe, or through legal means involving a foreign trip and the intervention of the U.S. State Department.

2. “ACCESSORIES-AFTER-THE-ACT”  This refers to children acquired the old fashioned way, only we think its most apt usage will be to describe the results of encounters for which there may have been an ulterior motive on the part of one of the participants.

So there you have it.  We are releasing these terms onto the ‘net, tagged like fish in a biologist’s field study.  As soon as you see one in print or hear it on a cable show, let us know.

Publishers Beware: States are Hungry for Tax Revenues

Friday, September 18th, 2009

State governments whose revenues are dramatically lower because of the recession and are required to balance their budgets are reluctant to cut spending. Thus, state tax authorities are looking everywhere for additional revenue and turning their collections people loose on easy targets.

Who might be an easy target? Could be out-of-state publishers that do business within that state. State authorities might look at whether or not the “foreign” seller of a product has been collecting taxes on sales made within their state and whether the seller has been paying state income taxes.

Out-of-state publishers usually feel protected because they don’t believe they are required to collect taxes and where they don’t have any physical location or employees in-state, they believe that they are exempt from state income taxes. But in one instance that was recently shared by someone, aggressive state tax authorities came up with novel interpretations of what it means to have “nexus” in a state and therefore to be subject to taxation. A publisher who distributes data via CD’s mailed to customers in other states got caught up in just such a mess. It took thousands of dollars and countless hours of staff time to fight this in just one state!

Another area to watch is states that determine state tax liability where a publisher has hired a collection firm to dun overdue accounts. And who hasn’t done this? The collection agency is considered an agent of the seller which, through creative interpretation, mean that the foreign company has a location in that state.

Last? There is no statute of limitations on back tax liability.

Talk to your lawyers and review your situation.

Follow the Leaders; Print Brands That Value Digital

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

Don’t miss the recent announcement by the Magazine Publishers of America [MPA] a couple weeks ago, http://www.magazine.org/ditital/14321.aspx, wherein they detail their members’ digital initiatives for all of 2009. These examples are great reading and hopefully provide incentive for other publishers to serve their audience with more offerings. While not referenced, these actions represent a wide range of financial investment.

Look at the titles. I don’t call them leaders because they are members of MPA. They are leaders in their respective fields and the point should not be missed that the leaders continue to evolve, step out, and experiment with digital tools and resources.

Here are my TOP Ten 2009 magazine digital initiatives:

1. More Magazine responded quickly to digital sub request from outer space and launched a blog

2. People en Espanol’s virtual makeover tour that drew 60 million visitors!

3. Women’s Health iPhone pre-loaded workouts

4. Scroll Motion’s iPhone app work with distribution and revenue models

5. Martha Stewart’s Martha University online

6. National Geographic’s Web site user generated content print pub: Your Shot

7. Sports Illustrated’s Web site relaunch: user friendly just got friendlier

8. Zinio’s partnership with hotels; guests can read digital magazines in room

9. This Old House June issue - all user generated from a community Web site

10. ESPN begins to charge for online content.

 It is my hope that many of you will step out and follow the leaders.

The Walters Museum in Baltimore and a Gentle Reminder about Progress

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

What to do when there are piles of files, albeit organized, on all corners of your desk and your email in box has 200 messages to be read? Take a couple hours and go clear your head. The Walters Museum in Baltimore beckoned me and two friends this Saturday afternoon.

First, who was Walters? There were two…father and son. Father was a self-made millionaire who scored his fortune in wholesale liquor and the railraod. Son was a faithful sidekick who was equally successful. They spent all their money on art and antiquities and when their collection got too big, they built themselves a museum. And a very interesting one at that.

The reason for this post, however, is not to talk about Walters or their museum. No, out of four floors on two buildings, one small cubby that housed an exhibit about communication stuck with me. The graphic was prepared for school children, but often the simpler the presentation, the more profound the message.

 There was a timeline that read as follows:

Hieroglyphics 3000BC     Pictograms 3500BC     Alphabet 1700BC     Parchment 200BC     Paper 105AD

Books 400AD     Printing 1455AD     Digital 20th century

A gentle reminder that you can’t stop progress. The difference between today and the last 4000 years is that it is transpiring at a much faster pace. A question we are asked frequently and that I pose to you is:

How do you respond to and manage change in your publishing operation? I believe this is a fundamental issue that separates the boys from the men.

Privacy: Friend or Foe?

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Today’s Washington Post, August 11, 2009, pages A2 and A3 [yes, I read the print version], gave pause to the topic of privacy. Much of our work with clients is about strategy, business models, tactics, creating, measuring impact, making and keeping readers, visitors, and customers happy to meet missions and make money. Rarely do conversations focus on privacy.

Few would question the impact that social networking [and tracking technologies] have made with how we communicate.  And guess what? With today’s announcement that Facebook purchased Friend Feed, if you are so inclined, your friends can track what you are doing on social media sites. The Post also reports that the Obama’s aides view social networking as good for you and me…something about transparency…and good for government. [George Orwell is flipping in his grave on this one.] And the government’s information czar indicates that as long as we can “opt out” on government sites, it’s not a big deal.

Here comes the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Democracy and Technology, among others, to protect U.S. citizens.

Congress has fiddled with this topic recently, but nothing major to report yet. 
Take heed, privacy policy is going to become increasingly important to content creators and consumers from a personal and a business perspective.

FutureReady DC Conference

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

“A challenging experience!”

“…great presenters and content that was on target. An incredible experience.”

“Thanks for a fabulous learning experience.”

“So much information in such a short time!”

“There was a TON of valuable content.”

“I knew nothing about usability before attending and I am already putting the information to work with my Web site.”

Cia Romano, President of Interface Guru, and I presented the inaugural FutureReady digital media seminar last week at the University of Virginia/Virginia Tech graduate center. Class participants [limited to 25] received 24 hours of content and team exercises about:

digital trends - content strategy - site strategy - social media tools - generating revenue online and with digital tools - usability case studies and guidelines - metrics - advertising that works online.

The relevant and rigorous curriculum presented a 360 view of digital publishing. Coming soon: tools and materials from FutureReady content that you can use with your staff and advertisers.

Gated/Premium/Paid Content Online?

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Many sites gate their content for lead or customer management purposes. This is a solid marketing objective. Examples of successful publishing sites doing so include ConsumerReports.org., Taunton.com, Chemweek.com and eRepublic.com.

There is ongoing discussion among publishers about why gated content might not make sense for websites. This thinking is predicated on sharing content as broadly as possible. Putting content behind a wall cuts off conversation. Using editorial content to drive traffic can be an audience development tool. But this is done within boundaries of business rules. 

Key questions to ask include what are the business goals, i.e. how do you convert the increased traffic into more members and/or more revenue from existing customers or members?

At the same time, some sites that have relied on site advertising as the primary source of revenue are qustioning whether this is a sound business model. The reason cited is that CPMs (cost per thousand) are going lower and the bar is rising higher on how much traffic is needed to generate online advertising revenue. Creating online revenue in addition to advertising is highly recommended.

Online veterans Jeff Jarvis and Alan Mutter had this to say in March 2009:

Point: “In the old-content economy, one could make maoney selling many copies of a product. In today’s link economy online, we need only one copy, and it is the links to it that give it value. We should be spending our effort figuring out how to get more links to original reporting to support it” [Jarvis]

Coutnerpoint: “It is vital that publishers produce content that is sufficiently unique, authoritative and valuable to motivate customers to pay. If there is powre in the brand, consuemrs recognize quality and value.” [Mutter]

To read more, go to http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-oew-mutter-jarvis19-2009mar19,0,5832874,full.story 

Trend? 

According to a December 2008 business to consumer (B2C) paid content five-year forecast conducted by Forrester Research, an independent technology and market research firm, there will be a decline in transaction based content sold online. There will most likely be a rise in sites that rely on advertising revenue to provide free content in two ways: 1) most content free and ad supported with premium services available for sale and 2) give content away and drive purchases in a more profitable channel such as events or products.

Sabatier Consulting recently queried several database fulfillment companies to ask if their publishing customers are gating content online. All responded that they are noticing an increase in both gating and charging for premium content. Approximately 25 to 30% of their clients are following these practices .

Member OrganizationsSNAP, the Society of National Association Publications that serves several hundred publishers providing publications to members in print and online, conducted an e-publishing trends survey in 2007 [most recent]. When asked how content is made available online, 64% indicated that they place some content and/or publications behind a gate [password protected] while 11% put almost all content behind a gate.Information provided by SIPA (Specialist Information Publishers Association) indicates the following reasons why people pay for access to some niche sites. These include:   

• When the organization has privileged access to source material, e.g. insider industry information
• When the site has a specific personality
• The site aggregates information which saves the visitor time
• The site hosts a specialist community
• Charging acts as a filter to ensure members have a reason and interest in participating
• Exclusivity
• Passionate about a subject and want to submerge themselves
• Training
• Help sites

SIPA goes so far as to say that the future of internet publishing is niche.

News and Portals

Primarily news sites [pure play and some publishers] and portals are the group dominating the conversation about gated/premium/paid content. They have legitimate concerns and face big challenges, but their issues are not quite the same as those of most consumer, B2B, and publishers serving membership organizations.Closing

Let’s stop wringing hands and focus on sound business principals: strategy and planning with clear voice and value proposition online supported by additional sources of online revenue. This is the challenge, not free vs. paid.

Audience Development Conference Recap

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

The Audience Development Conference ‘09 wrapped up yesterday in Chicago.  Sessions and conversation focused on digital magazines, building traffic and audience online, social media and marketing databases.

The two keynote sessions were particularly good. Brian Wolfe, Consumer Marketing & Sales at Time, Inc. encouraged audience developers to help create a great editorial product by testing cover images, subjects, colors and lines; to increase innovation; and optimal use of data.

Gordon McLeod, President of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, shared his vision and strategy for his network. Of particular importance, he believes in registering users, serving a mix of Free and Paid content [versus either or] and bigger ad units with more functionality resulting in less clutter on sites and better results for advertisers. It was interesting to learn that McLeod’s group is producing and uploading 120 videos a week and he shared that they are “aggressively trying to figure out paid video.”

McLeod’s “Five Rules for Online” are: 1) Free and paid content, 2) Own your customers, 3) Present clear and consistent consumer proposition, 4) Holistic circulation strategy, and 5) Digital commerce technology.

Viral Marketing Online, presented by Jason Jercinovic, VP Content & Dev at Complex Media was a great send off. He’s a savvy marketer and his seminar presented tips and guidelines in an entertaining presentation.

Eight Questions to Ask about your CMS

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

With literally hundreds of products available, how to choose? Do you know the eight questions that are critical to answer before you search for a new or alternate solution for content management? Technology consultant, Bob Atkinson, has updated our content management system overview.

Click the Contact Us tab, provide your email address and ask for our free white paper. Good information - no strings attached. 

Digital Magazine Editions for Mobile Devices…Waste of Time

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

Advertising Age ran an article today (4/28) titled, “Publishers Seize on iPhone as Great White Digital Hope for Print”

Despite the mention of a couple of information apps, 90% of the article is about print pubs trying to be relevant (and profitable) by re-purposing their content as mobile editions and subscriptions or as stripped-out articles with attendant images and ads, delivered to current mobile devices. The information apps can and will work (I use some on my Blackberry now), but the attempts at digital magazine editions for mobile devices is a waste of time. Similarly, there are more than enough mobile aggregators out there already (Google News’ mobile format, etc.) to make it tough to make money breaking your own stories out for mobile with display ads.

But the bigger flaw with the story is that it is talking about current hardware (iPhone, Blackberry, Kindle, etc.). None of that hardware (including the current iPhone or the little new one due out this summer or Palm’s neat little Pre) is suited for digital/mobile magazine or newspaper distribution or re-marketing.

No mobile device out there at the moment (or announced yet) matters to print content producers. That includes Kindle and Sony’s eBook reader, both doomed by technology choices, proprietary formats and pricing.

The battle will be fought on the NEXT generation of mobile devices, the first of which is slated to appear before very long.

Bob Atkinson

Technology Lead, Sabatier Consulting LLC

Should We All Just Go Home?

Monday, April 6th, 2009

The B-to-B magazine sector has just gone through a terrible quarter, following a terrible year.  It was just announced that there is no buyer for Cygnus, a large multi-title trade magazine publisher, echoing the news from last year that there had been no buyer for Reed Business Information after it sat on the market for months.  Print advertising is way down, continuing its long, familiar decline.  Even online advertising is down.  The implication is that the industry is dead.  What should we do?  Should we all just go home?

The first big magazine transaction I worked on was for McGraw-Hill back in the mid-1980’s.  We simultaneously sold American Machinest and 33 Metal Producing to Penton and Engineering & Mining Journal and Coal Age to Maclean Hunter.  Coal Age was spun out of E&MJ in 1909.  E&MJ got started in 1866, ten years before Sitting Bull won the battle of Little Bighorn and Custer made his last stand.  The irony of this is that we were dumping those “smokestack” titles to increase our focus on faster growing computer titles like Byte, each issue of which was a doorstop.  Now, Byte is gone, while AM, 33MP (now Metal Producing and Processing), E&MJ and CA are all still publishing.  I don’t put any great significance in that; publications have life cycles, some longer than others.

Perhaps what is significant is that we have had bad quarters before.  We have had disruptive technologies affect our industry before.  What we do, though, in the B-to-B business is timeless.  The publisher of AM, Dick Larsen, said to me on his way out the door on 6th Avenue for the last time, “No matter how many computers you have at the front end of a metal fabricating process, you still need someone down on the shop floor who knows what metal will cut another metal and how to make things work where the cutting takes place.”  In B-to-B we know how to help people who work “where the cutting takes place” in any industry do their jobs better.  That won’t change, and that’s where the future of the industry lies.  And yes, doing that well is what creates value for publications and the companies that own them.  Back to work.

Ed Fitzelle

Senior Consultant, Sabatier Consulting LLC

Getting Through Dark Times

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

I have stopped reading any press release, article or blog that reports on layoffs and pubs going out of business. No, I am not burying my head in the sand, I just choose to spend any spare time in a search for business models, ideas, processes, etc. that can help publishers (print and digital) weather the economic storm. Here are sound principals to consider:

-Assess performance (evaluate strategy and tactics in all areas of your company; the days of flying without a current plan are over)

-Consider partnerships (for everything from content development to marketing to back office functions)

-Innovate (tap into your audience/readers/customers for co-creation)

-Protect profits (enhance customer relationships, realign priorities, improve competitive tracking, leverage pricing and  maximize revenue)

And last, study the leaders in any category. There are reasons they are number one.

Positively Green Magazine is Positively Good

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

While making a daily stop at the local Whole Foods market I noticed a new magazine at checkout titled Positively Green (Good. Simple. Solutions.) I paid $4.99 for the quarterly and later discovered that my five bucks was well spent. The content, directed toward women, is sophisticated…green without grunge.

The companion web site, positivelygreen.com is smartly done. I like this launch because it is different and speaks to an audience of women that have been left ignored until now; women who like a bit a glamour, but who have conscience.

Let’s just hope the business plan is as good as the product. Selling four issues a year for $14 with a promise to donate $2 to charity means advertising better “be there”. The inaugural issue carried 15.3 advertising pages (out of 114 total).

Who launches at a time like this? As Rex Hammock of Hammock Publishing recently noted, it can and has worked for the right idea at the right time.

Positively Green is a good concept at the right time. Let’s just hope the business plan is as good as the product and the timing.

Esquire’s 75th Anniversary Issue

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

Earlier today I was a woman on a mission. I had read numerous articles and press blurbs about Esquire’s 75^th Anniversary special edition with a digital (E-ink) cover. And then I started receiving email from colleagues saying this “thing” is so interesting. Our business manager went to Borders to buy a copy which was shiny, but did not blink. Wondering what’s up with that, she began contacting bookstores in the DC metro area to ask if they had any digital copies in stock.

Calls revealed that sales are brisk; most stores are down to one “dog-eared” (their words) copy. Clerks described the special edition as “the fun thing that sparkles” or “the blinking thing”, etc.

Out of curiosity she checked eBay and you bet - it’s there. The current auction closed with 18 bids and the winner paying $18.50 plus $5 shipping versus the $5.99 cover price. Printing only 100,000 copies for sale on the newsstand feeds the passion of collectors.

As reported in the New York Times, Esquire’s publisher states that he fully expects to see this cover featured in a museum. Gotta go - my copy is on hold somewhere in Virginia.

The Folio: Awards

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

Publishing trade magazine Folio: just released the list of finalists for their annual Eddies (editorial) and Ozzies (design) awards with winners to be announced soon in Chicago. There were hundreds of entries in both tracks and the competition is fierce to win the coveted awards.

This year, as in years past, I was one of many judges across North America that received a large box of magazines and single article entries to evaluate. There is no real promotional advantage to being a judge, but there is a great advantage for someone like me who spends hours each week working with publishers of every ilk. Serving as a judge allows me to pause and read great writing that I might otherwise not read or even be aware of.

Maybe I was particularly lucky to get the assignments I did; the writing in my categories and entries was good… really good. As I wrapped up reading entry number 56 I was reminded how proud I am to be associated with an industry that brings information, entertainment and creative genius (at times) to the public (whether consumer, trade, or non-profit).

Thanks to the Editors and Designers who strive for excellence. For many, mission accomplished.

Adapting to a Changing World

Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

While preparing to teach an editorial seminar I read something written in 1990 by a very wise colleague in publishing.

“There’s no time for anything any more says more than we realize. We march in double, even triple time. We eat, pay attention, converse, even read on the run. Despite all the talk of quality time, there is no more children’s hour. The line between school and play has blurred for youngsters, as the line between work and recreation has blurred for adults.

Consider how often people do two or more things at once. Sony Walkman enables them to listen as they walk. Computers encourage work with travel. We have cordless phones, car radios and tv sets that allow us to watch two channels at once.

Not only have the times of day become blurred, but so have the stages of life. Today it is difficult to recognize when childhood ends and adulthood begins, when people are in their prime or really old.

There are good reasons to argue that most of this rush is due less to the pressure of life and labor than to our sources of information. The media are life’s metronome. It is the information flood that keeps us running -not to escape it, but to keep up with the many choices it offers.

The way readers read has been changed by much more than accelerated time, but rather by changes in the media, which constantly transform how our audience reads, watches and listens. The walls between the senses have melted. Reading, watching and listening used to be distinct functions. Modern technology has so improved and amplified communication that people have facts and ideas coming at them from all directions. It is as if all the containers were overfilled, and knowledge is spilling out of its compartments  and merging into a great pool of information and theory from which everybody can drink.”

Musings from someone ahead of his time. We miss you Jim Mann. RIP

media management monograph, nov/dec 1990