Digital Discourse / Archives for Ronn Levine

SIPAlert Daily – Better storytelling makes better content marketing

September 9, 2013 By

After reading SIPA member Robert Lerose’s excellent interview with Content Marketing Institute founder Joe Pulizzi for the Bank of America Small Business Community site, it’s hard not to be a content marketing convert. (It’s one of the four tracks for SIPA’s Las Vegas Marketing Conference.) Pulizzi wants you to have goals for your project. “OK, we’re successful because…” retention is up, our SEO is better, we have more leads, etc. He said that for him, the success metric was free subscriptions. Lerose asked why?

“We’re trying to get people into the top of the funnel to sign up, so we can start building relationships with them,” Pulizzi said. “Most small businesses start their online attention efforts with blog activity. The blog becomes the magnet for everything a small business does when it comes to content marketing. You can publish easily, the content is easily shareable, and search engines love blogs. From there, you can reimagine that content into other things, like white papers, newsletters, or webinar programs.”

Lerose then asked how that information turns into relevant content?

“Most small businesses go wrong because they’re creating content that’s just okay—and okay content doesn’t cut through the clutter,” Pulizzi said. “What cuts through the clutter? Content that people want to do something with, that they want to make a behavior toward. This is not easy. It’s difficult to tell stories that cut through the clutter.”

So how do you tell better stories? In a recent post on Poynter, Anna Li wrote about one newly popular way called design thinking. It’s “a process that many professionals, including journalists, have discovered and adopted in the last few years to create products focused on users,” wrote Li.

She gives five pillars for design thinking:

1. Empathize. Gain insight by learning more from your customers. This came up in our recent Mobile Essentials webinar. (Members can link to it here.) In trying to understand what mobile’s place should be for EB Medicine’s customers, consultant Astek spoke in-depth with five ER physicians to understand what they needed. The findings were critical in guiding EB Medicine’s next steps and made them think about their content differently. “Use empathy by asking open-ended questions and actively listening to uncover people’s needs and motivations,” Li wrote. “Asking ‘Why?’ often is effective….What would my audience like to know?” Remember that you’re not just interviewing people for a specific story you have in mind.

2. Define. Narrow your focus. What problem are you trying to solve for your customers through this content?

3. Ideate. Brainstorm. One design thinking school uses colorful sticky notes to keep ideas in play. “Share your ideas…for feedback, and ask users for feedback on social-media sites to gauge their interest in a story,” Li wrote. This is where any communities that you’ve built will be useful. The article urges you to put your assumptions and preconceptions aside.

4. Prototype. “The goal here is to fail quickly and frequently because failing often and earlier in the process tends to lead to more success in the long run,” Li wrote. In this month’s National Geographic, Hannah Bloch also wrote of the importance of failing: “Even at their most miserable, failures provide information to help us do things differently next time…To encourage entrepreneurship, the Netherlands-based ABN AMRO Bank started an Institute of Brilliant Failures. Eli Lilly and Company, the pharmaceutical giant, began throwing ‘R&D-focused outcome celebrations’—failure parties—two decades ago to honor data gleaned from trials for drugs that didn’t work. (Some 90 percent of all such trials fail.) Some foundations have even begun requiring grantees to report failures as well as successes.”

5. Test. Sound familiar? Taking our time to make sure everything is just right used to be the standard. Not anymore. “…launch an early release and get users’ comments,” wrote Li. “…Feedback frightens some people. The goal of design thinking isn’t relinquishing your common sense and intuition to the masses or pandering to your readers. It’s a method to increase collaboration and gauge the impact your story will have.” She says that journalists may tend to think they know just what to write. But the good ones listen.

 

To subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily, create or update your SIIA User profile and select “SIPA interest.”

Ronn LevineRonn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

Share|
Filed Under: SIPA, SIPAlert Daily Tagged With: , ,

SIPAlert Daily – Bezos’ 3 big ideas and making ‘the new thing’

September 5, 2013 By

Two quotes from Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and the new owner of The Washington Post, stood out for me this week:

1) “We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient. If you replace ‘customer’ with ‘reader,’ that approach, that point of view, can be successful at The Post, too.”

2) “You have to figure out: How can we make the new thing?”

Looking through the newspaper clippings on my desk—the physical print business may be in “structural decline,” according to Bezos, but you wouldn’t know it by my desk and living room—that “new thing” can be so many things. New products and services are debuting all the time, offering customers more choices for how they manage their personal and professional lives.

I am quite sure that most “inventions” did not happen without some kind of group discussion, either in flushing out the idea or helping to develop it. That’s also the idea behind SIPA’s upcoming Fall Publishers Roundtable, Monday, Sept. 30, here in Washington, D.C. The topic is Creating Profitable New Products, and the two leaders, David Foster of BVR and Don Nicholas of Mequoda, will attempt to harness the amazing group knowledge that will be present to help you make your “new thing.”

I read another article recently on this topic titled, “Are You Innovating With a Purpose?” by Marillyn Hewson, chief executive of Lockheed Martin. Her point is that innovation is much more likely to occur when there is a purpose driving it—besides money. “Have a goal that’s bigger than just meeting a deadline or closing a sale,” she writes. “…How can I innovate myself so that I’m achieving a purpose that benefits my organization and is fulfilling to me?” For her, it’s sharing ideas through social media.

For his part, Bezos’ passion has always been with “the printed word in all its forms.” So you could say that he invented a new way of bringing that to an audience. “The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author’s world,” he said. “Great writers create an alternative world. It doesn’t matter if you enter that world” digitally or through print.

For the Post, he wants to bring back the “daily ritual” of reading the paper—and believes that he can do that through tablets more than on a website. He says that tablets can give readers a look and feel similar to a traditional printed paper. Websites remain important for the B2B world of SIPA, but looking at when and how your subscribers/members open your emails will give you better data to judge that.

And most importantly, Bezos says, “don’t be boring.” At first glance, we might think that he’s talking only to his newly acquired staff of writers, but I think he’s talking to the entire newspaper. In whatever role you play, engagement is key. If you’re a marketer, your next email should be a little different than the last. If you’re in sales, try a new bundle of products. And if you’re the person in charge, step back for a moment and think about what your new app might be.

And think about coming to that Sept. 30 roundtable. New things usually don’t happen without a push.

 

To subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily, create or update your SIIA User profile and select “SIPA interest.”

Ronn LevineRonn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

Share|
Filed Under: SIPA, SIPAlert Daily Tagged With: ,

SIPAlert Daily – Managing renewals means managing relationships

September 4, 2013 By

In the past, we might have talked about renewals only in terms of a series of letters or emails with expiration dates, and post-expires and special covers with big letters, ONE ISSUE TO GO! Laurie Hofmann, the group marketing director, cable division, for Access Intelligence, did mention those things during the session, Renewals: Keep the Engine Running, at SIPA’s recent Annual Conference.

But the two stories she told near the end illustrate a new reality for increasing renewals—the value of audience engagement and staying in touch with your subscribers throughout the year. “Conceptually we’re looking at the relationship build,” Hofmann said. “Once you have the relationship in place, renewals are a very profitable business. Even our CEO replies that it’s the most profitable thing we do.”

First story. “For the past five years I [covered] the chemical industry,” she said. “Dow Chemical was undergoing a lot of breaking news stories. They tried to form a relationship with the Kuwaiti government, get financing, but it was at a time when the chemical industry was imploding. I started doing a strategy where I was looking at what we were reporting on Dow Chemical, and then send it out as breaking news stories. You should have seen the spikes. And when I looked through Google analytics [to see] who was reading it—it was Dow. I went to Dow and said your people are really following us; they’re interested in this. You need to pay us more. And it worked.”

The second story Hofmann called “listening tours” and she was just getting started with them. It involves “going into a subscriber’s company, talking to the administrator but then also to the people who are actually reading your publication and finding out their opinions about your publication and the industry, and what they’re worried about. What should we be focusing on to better cater the content they want to have?…This should increase our renewals.”

Hofmann pointed out that a renewal does not just mean another $300 for the following year, or whatever the subscription costs. There are ancillary products and seats at your events that have to be figured in. To this monetary end, she puts forth up to 11 varied efforts in the typical cycle, starting eight months prior to expire and continuing at least two months after.

“We mix up efforts with email and print,” she said. “People respond differently. We found that print seems to work best for us because people see a notice and they think ‘Okay, I’m going to respond to that right now.’ I have a sense that emails are getting lost right now. I don’t know about you but I go through them every morning and can automatically delete, delete, delete. ‘Oh, maybe here’s one I can look at.’ [Of course,] they still get some traction—we link directly to the fulfillment house so they can pay quickly.”

Hofmann said they also use telemarketers, though Access has the advantage of putting their client services people to the task. “They can answer questions better than telemarketers,” she said. But if telemarketers can be briefed and given referral information, then they can be successful.

“At the end [of the cycle,] we do a double, email and print,” Hofmann said. “We change copy on a regular basis. The first one is always the softest offer—two extra months of CableFAX free. We don’t use it any other time. [That agrees with what copywriter Robert Lerose used to tell me about going with your best offer first, so that subscribers will never think they should wait for a better offer.]

“The next month we’ll print out the statement for them and mail that—and maybe we’ll offer $100 savings on a two-year subscription of CableFAX Daily…I will try to include the expire months—practical information that accounts payable appreciates seeing. At the end, we’ll offer a last chance to reinstate.” Her letters are on smaller than 8.5 x 11 paper because she feels that size looks more “invoicey” and uninviting.

Hofmann also pointed out that your subscribers are interested in what your editors think. So push them forward. “Use promotional emails from the editors with personal salutations,” she said. “Solidify those relationships. Editors should be connecting with readers, engaging them and reaching out for story ideas. Your coverage should have direct interest to that company.”

She also believes in:

- email alerts between issues;

- special offers;

- stepped up pricing – “Use with caution,” she said, but she will always increase the rate by $50. “If they call you on it, then they obviously get whatever price they respond to.”

- price increase campaigns. “The price will go up at the end of the year. Lock in this price now.”

- access to additional platforms as incentive;

- If all else fails, one-issue-to-go cover wraps—It’s time to renew!

Her conclusion: Manage relationships all the time by providing what the readers want/need/desire, and they will keep coming back. And mix up the approaches and touch points to allow response to the efforts that resonate the most. She also mentioned awards and webinars, two other reasons that people renew. The goal? “To continue engagement with the reader and keep things going.”

To subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily, create or update your SIIA User profile and select “SIPA interest.”

Ronn LevineRonn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

Share|
Filed Under: Content, SIPA, SIPAlert Daily Tagged With: ,

SIPAlert Daily – What’s the one thing each of your subscribers will love today?

September 3, 2013 By

 

There’s an interesting post today on the Nieman Journalism Lab site by Adrienne LaFrance. It’s a bit of a throwback, if you excuse the pun (she focuses on a new digital baseball newsletter called The Slurve). She’s here to say that newsletters can be to the 2010s what blogs were to the 2000s.

Rather than creating an intensely focused blog, LaFrance wants publishers to deliver more quality, personalized information directly to a subscriber’s inbox. “Why settle for hyper-targeted coverage that caters to millennials nostalgic for Dawson’s Creek who may or may not see your work, for example, when you can deliver content to an audience of individuals who feel like you’re writing directly to them, right in their inbox?”—or in baseball terminology, their wheelhouse.

To be fair, this is more than just Everything Old Is New Again. The examples that LaFrance cites of quality “newsletters” are not called that by their creators. She points to Nieman which calls theirs Daily Email Updates; Ann Friedman who publishes the Ann Friedman Weekly. Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop is a “weekly publication.” The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake simply calls his Aaron Blake’s Mailing List. Regardless of what we call them, they engage and involve, target specific audiences and are sent to subscriber inboxes.

This is also what The Slurve does. Started by Michael Brendan Dougherty, formerly of the American Conservative and the Business Insider, it delivers baseball each morning to several hundred subscribers. It tries to distinguish itself by taking the time to be both original and a window to other excellent, original content. He charges $4 a month or $36 a year, “a rate that felt affordable enough to draw subscribers, but high enough to keep people interested each day,” he said. And it’s working.

“I find a newsletter personal—more personal than a blog,” Dougherty says. “It is addressed to you.”

Some elements Dougherty is capitalizing on:

* A hard paywall. Non-subscribers can only see a couple sample issues but nothing from today, no scores, no comments, no highlights. You have to pay to play.

* “Daily” is an engaging word. It scored an impressive 27% positive variance on open rates in a recent subject line survey—and even more in click-thrus.

* Differentiation is good. His daily stands out—people know what they’re getting each day.

* Social media. His Twitter following continues to grow—more than 2,200 followers including some big hitters with much larger followings

On the site Contently, Evan Randall wrote, “By creating original content and curating everyone else’s work into one place, Dougherty is part of a change in how we think about content. Alan Jacobs of The American Conservative asks for a ‘Slurve’-type newsletter for every topic—such as one that covers soccer, or the world of academia—and even suggests that this could have been the answer all along: ‘It may well be that we came closer to getting the problem of digital news delivery right fifteen years ago.’”

“A generalist fan may love just one thing a day,” Dougherty said. “I make sure The Slurve always finds that one thing.” After an original opening, he gives links to stories and highlights that he has found after hours of research. He does his part for gamification with a Trivia quiz, and then even gives us box scores, one of the last reasons true sports fans will give for subscribing to the print paper.

People “don’t have the time or inclination to sift through lots of junky or parochial content on the Internet to find the best writing,” Dougherty said.

Has Dougherty reinvented the wheel? Hardly. But he seems to be taking what’s best from the new and old schools—call it Moneyball meets the smell of shoe leather. Let’s face it—time is not on our side any more. There’s just not enough of it. The more you can do to create a one-stop shopping place for your niche subject, the better. Now play ball.

To subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily, create or update your SIIA User profile and select “SIPA interest.”

Ronn LevineRonn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

Share|
Filed Under: SIPA, SIPAlert Daily Tagged With:

SIPAlert Daily – Members leveraging content marketing tactics

August 29, 2013 By

I’m the chair for the Content Marketing track at SIPA’s annual Marketing Conference, Dec. 11-13 in Las Vegas. I’m just finalizing the session descriptions now, but the subjects we will cover include social media, video, blogging, IT, analytics and SEO. My goal is that these sessions will be hands-on, so that the video session will show you how to do a video, the analytics how to keep track of who’s reading your content, and so on.

There is some great content marketing going on in the industry now that I will point you to over the next couple months, and some of that proudly comes from SIPA members. Sharing strategies and tactics with your peers has always been part of SIPA, and that tradition will continue at the Marketing Conference. For example, Real Magnet has an impressive blog that gives you actionable information and detailed strategy. Recent posts, which seem to come about twice a week, are headlined, “Which emails should include a call to inaction?” “Marketing to mobile” and “If Nobody clicks, does nobody care?”

Last week they posted an interview with senior director of deliverability, John Bollinger. It’s a good primer on the state of email deliverability:

“There has been a focus change in the email world in the last year or so at the major ISPs. They have been focusing more on engagement as a factor of deliverability. All of the old rules still apply regarding content, complaint rates and things like that, but now they’re really looking…if someone is not opening a message or they’re deleting it before they’re opening it; if they’re opening and reading it and how long they’re reading it; if they’re clicking on a link; if they’re moving things from their junk mail folder into the inbox. These are all the positive things that ISPs now bring into play to distinguish between a valid sender and what they consider to be a spammer. The more marketers can be specific and relevant to that particular subscriber, the more likely they’ll be able to continue deliverability to that recipient.”

There’s more good stuff where that came from. Across the pond, Optimus Education, a division of Electric Word in the U.K., runs a Consult the Experts page where they list questions and the date they’re asked, such as “Could you please tell me where I could find precise, written information on funding for exchange students from other EU countries?” In order to get the answers, you have to either log in, take a trial or subscribe. The questions are substantive enough so that you do get a good idea of what you will find behind the paywall.

They have seven hubs, so the Consult the Experts looks impressive, especially because the questions are recent. There is also a “News” page that is not behind a paywall. If I’m in this field, then this is a pretty good font of information that I’m going to check on at least a weekly basis. You can look at the listings by date or hub. It’s also a nicely designed website, with clear listings, easy to read titles and calls to action in many places.

Modern Distribution Management posts weekly – sometimes even more – podcasts. They call one of their features Manufacturing Revival Radio and a typical subject, from last week, was Real-Time Data’s Effect on Production. They provide Show Notes and Highlights with three bullets – “Discover how real-time collection and analysis can have an immediate impact on your production” – in addition to a short bio of the speaker.

This is another well-designed website, with banner ads that don’t disrupt, good calls to action and easy-to-read buttons. Tom Gale, the president of Gale Media, MDM’s parent, is also a track chair for Las Vegas. I’m excited by the high quality of the Conference Chairs – Adam Goldstein and Bob Coleman - my fellow track chairs and the early list of speakers that have already been selected. I’ll soon have an interview with Joel Rothstein, the keynote speaker from Marriott, who will be speaking on gamification, one of the hottest topics in the industry right now.  That alone should entice many to attend.

To subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily, create or update your SIIA User profile and select “SIPA interest.”

Ronn LevineRonn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

 

Share|
Filed Under: SIPA, SIPA Events, SIPAlert Daily Tagged With: ,

SIPAlert Daily – Proposed college digital curriculum has strong resonance for us

August 28, 2013 By

Up until now—or at least a short while ago—the talk for small businesses focused on adding digital into your product mix. This has to be rephrased, and Cindy Royal, an associate professor at Texas State University, has done just that.

Her article, on the PBS site, is titled We Need a Digital-First Curriculum to Teach Modern Journalism. It reflects the idea that the traditional journalism school isn’t teaching the kinds of skills that modern journalists need, like HTML coding, building an audience on social media and mobile delivery. But for me, what makes it so effective is that what she recommends for colleges applies to businesses as well—that our focus on digital must be resolute.

Royal writes that we must no longer approach “digital in a piecemeal fashion—injecting digital topics into existing courses…I think there is a better route, another way to conceptualize an entirely new curriculum around Digital and Data-Driven Communication.”

She is writing about a whole new way of thinking that must be adopted—not how an article will look in a print newsletter or magazine on a Tuesday morning or Thursday afternoon but how that article or webinar invitation or blog post will look on a tablet or smartphone at 5:30 a.m. on a weekday or 3 p.m. on a Saturday.

Let me interject here that this is what the new bloc of content providers that SIIA has assembled—SIPA, The Association of Business Information and Media Companies (ABM) and SIIA’s excellent Content Division—has set out to do. The new Mobile Essentials series got off to an amazing start a couple weeks ago and continues in September. The Content Division’s thought-leading Data Content Conference takes place in October in Philadelphia and then SIPA’s Marketing Conference visits Las Vegas in December.

The comparison of business to academia works here because most of us are to digital what students entering college are to journalism: novices. Royal has three guiding principles:
1. Flip the Curriculum;
2. New Concentrations;
3. Experience Learning.

In Flip the Curriculum, she wants students to take courses in which “digital is the foundation, and the basic skills of writing, reporting and editing are injected into digitally focused courses, as opposed to inserting a digital lesson or two into traditional classes.” The courses include Multimedia/Mobile Writing and Reporting, Digital Media Law and The History and Culture of Digital Media.

Already, students in Advanced Online Media at Texas State University learn Web development, responsive design, data visualization, Web scraping and content management system customization. Think most of us couldn’t use those courses? Her point in knowing the history and culture of digital is that’s where innovation often comes from. “This approach offers a mindset that encourages students to think innovatively about what could or should come next.” Sign me up.

For New Concentrations, Royal would like to see a visual emphasis where graphic design would focus on Web and mobile delivery. “Courses would introduce more advanced programming concepts, Web [and] mobile development [etc.],” she writes. “This concentration could be supported by collaborations with other departments or with local professionals or organizations, with the goal of ultimately co-opting these skills with a communications context.”

And, of course, social media. She wants students focused on “engagement and “advanced social media implementations, like the use of analytics and the creation of comprehensive social media campaigns.” Again, I‘m there.

The third principle Royal puts out there is Experience Learning. The key here, she writes, might be getting a faculty that is more digitally clued in. Similarly, businesses need to find those people as well. At SIPA’s Las Vegas Conference, you will meet some of them. My fellow track chairs include digitally-oriented folks like Nancy Brand of Chartwell and Jenny Fukumoto of Ragan, in addition to Tom Gale who runs a company, MDM, that is ahead of the digital curve in almost all areas.

Here’s Royal’s last sentence: “It’s time that curriculum reflects the future of media, rather than its past, creating a comprehensive framework and courses that establish an innovative mindset amongst our students and ourselves.” Just substitute “our businesses” for curriculum, “atmosphere” for courses, and “colleagues” for students, and you have what should be our mantra moving forward.

Join us as we lead you down this intricate but necessary road. We can’t put you back in college unfortunately—sorry, we’re not that good—but we can help you put forth this digital-first mindset in everything you do.

 

Share|
Filed Under: Content, SIPA, SIPAlert Daily Tagged With: ,

Talk, Don’t Run: First ‘Mobile Essentials’ webinar yields firm but guarded business case

August 28, 2013 By

You would expect “communication” to be the buzzword for a panel on relationships, public policy or workplace harmony. But mobile optimization?

Yet, talking meaningfully to your subscribers/members was one of the keys that came out of Making the Business Case, the first webinar in SIIA’s new Mobile Essentials series titled The Guide to Creating a Mobile Business.

“Talk to readers to see how they’re using your content,” advised Greg Krehbiel, director of marketing operations for The Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc. “Communicate with your customer service rep to see what he or she is hearing. How are your readers accessing your information?”

The webinar laid the groundwork for content providers to get started with mobile. Although the majority of B2B websites are not optimized for mobile, a growing percentage of your audience is connecting with you via a mobile device. In addition, an ABM study found that 75% of respondents would engage more with a mobile-optimized version of your website.

But Matt Kinsman, vice president of content and programming for ABM, and the webinar’s first speaker, cautioned publishers to take that extra step. “Before you spend all that money on mobile, understand what your customers want and how they want it,” he advised.

Kinsman pointed to Farm Journal Pulse, a magazine that has enjoyed great success with targeted mobile messaging. “They are doing a lot with iPad apps and advanced mobile strategies,” Kinsman said. “They have developed one of the aggressive mobile platforms in B2B by understanding what their customers want and how they want it. Because 97% of farmers take their cell phones with them every morning, the company recently launched text-driven mobile solutions, including text message updates and coupons delivered through text.

Both Kinsman and Andy Swindler, president of Astek Consulting, spoke of the importance of business plans and talking to your subscribers—instead of trusting generic statistics. “There is a pressure to go mobile, a fear of being left behind” that motivates some publishers, Swindler said. Instead, there should be a business plan that tells exactly what you are attempting to accomplish. “It’s really easy to go in the wrong direction,” Kinsman added.

Greg’s 10 Rules of Thumb

“What’s the purpose of your mobile product?” asked Krehbiel. “What’s mobile about it?” Here are 10 rules he believes you should abide by in weighing your decision to go mobile:

1. Be careful with generic stats. They show us there’s movement in a certain direction, he said. But it may not be your direction. “You want to look at what your customers are doing in the mobile space. The average mobile behavior probably doesn’t have and never will have much to do with your business.”

2. Pay close attention to what you do. What’s your behavior on mobile? Look at how you use different devices and what you use them for.

3. Data is not the plural form of anecdote.  Do not confuse the two. Learn from your own experience and listen to other people.

4. Get your own stats. How many of your people are reading your emails on a mobile device? Look at time of day.  Measure your traffic from mobile devices vs. paid subscription.

5. Going mobile doesn’t happen overnight.  It happens in stages. Are your marketing emails or product delivey being opened on mobile?

6. How and when do your customers use your content?  What’s particularly mobile about farmers? “That was genius what Farm Journal did,” Krehbiel said. That’s meeting your customers where they are.”

7. Distinguish mobile web vs. apps. Apps give readers a better experience, but you have to jump thru Apple’s hoops. And it’s not just about the experience; it has to fit in with your business model.

8. Tablet vs phone-sized screens. Know how they’re consuming your content. An iPad allows more engagement. Are you on an open-source platform that has mobile plug-ins?

9. Don’t listen to the geniuses. Remember the paperless office, the flying car.

10. Where are you earning your revenue?  Don’t major in minors. Make sure you do a cost-benefit analysis. Increase that revenue to serve your customers better.

A case study

Swindler then presented a case study that Astek undertook for SIPA member EB Medicine. The goals were to get in touch with EB Medicine’s readers, understand what the true value proposition of mobile would be for them, and finally separate the mobile buzz from reader reality.

“Overall, they showed good growth in mobile traffic,” Swindler said. But he questioned if that was enough to justify a huge financial outlay. “Don’t let fear guide a critical decision. Anecdotes, buzz, a couple survey responses, is that enough to say this is a direction? They had done quantitative research.” But Swindler decided that they needed some qualitative research as well.

Astek spoke in-depth with five emergency room physicians—the EB Medicine audience—to truly understand what they needed, “rather than just get answers to survey questions.” They wanted to know “how they think, how they are using this technology. How are they using their iPhones in the emergency room? Would a quick reference guide help them do their jobs better?”

The findings were critical in guiding EB Medicine’s next steps. It made them think about their content differently. It helped them understand that they had more than one kind of reader. “It’s not enough to just say this is our readers,” Swindler said. “We needed a deeper understanding of that core value of EB Medicine.” They found that the best way to spread the word about their app would be one doctor telling another—and, if possible, hooking the residents, even if they couldn’t pay yet.

Engagement gets better

The final presenter was Jeffrey S. Litvack, senior VP & chief digital officer for American Lawyer Media. He said that with sales of smartphones overtaking PCs in 2012, 2013 would be the “tipping point” for mobile.

‘How did we approach mobile? We looked at what our users are doing,” Litvack said. “How are they interacting with us? Is it through the mobile Web, e-newsletters, mobile apps, digital editions for mobile devices?” He spoke of the decision to go either with responsive design—a scaling down of your site—or native—an all new-for-mobile site. ALM chose native. They were able to launch from Day 1 with a positive ROI by selling the ad rights to a sponsor.

Litvack said that with more readers opening email on their smartphones, the importance of optimization increases. That view may determine if the reader saves or deletes. Since the launch of ALM’s mobile optimized websites, click thrus have increased 120%. “That’s hockey-stick growth,” he said. “Very rare. We’ve had 144% more traffic coming from mobile and 40% in average click-thru rates for advertisers.” The mobile breakdown has been 2/3 smartphone and 1/3 tablet.

Though valuable, Litvack said that apps can be very expensive to build and maintain. He warned of going the Apple route, where you have to abide by their timing for both launch and updates. Apps can be effective, he added, but with almost a million apps in the app store, “getting noticed is very hard.”

He believes that engagement and the number of times people come back will always be higher through an app than on the desktop. “The users will be more interactive with that content. People will look at more pages, because it will download the information [easier] and make [the process] more a seamless.”

Lastly, Litvack stressed the opportunities that mobile offers for attracting print advertisers. “Digital editions resonate with print advertisers. They allow interactivity. You can sell them at print rate. Smaller screen sizes mean less content,” but less can be more. He also spoke of the importance of taking a different approach with mobile—from headlines to delivery. “Organizational and process changes are needed,” Litvack said. “Mobile is not a standalone channel; it’s part of the entire customer experience. And it’s becoming the predominant way for accessing your sites.”

The next big thing, Litvack pondered. “How mobile will be connected to cars.”

The second webinar, The Guide to Creating a Mobile Business, will take place Sept. 19.  Sign up here.

Ronn LevineRonn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

 

Share|
Filed Under: Content, SIPA, SIPA Events Tagged With: ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »