Digital Discourse / Content

SIPAlert Daily – The importance of branding for today’s journalists

September 25, 2013 By

I recall walking into The Washington Post sports department as an intern many years ago and seeing Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser going at it on some sports item of the day. Kornheiser was already a columnist and Wilbon an up-and-coming reporter. Later on, Wilbon became a columnist, then an ESPN talking head and ABC Sports host. Kornheiser built another audience through a Style section column and then a national radio show.

Now they host Pardon the Interruption on ESPN, going at it on sports items of the day—but being paid A LOT more. They’re both very well-branded with podcasts, video, radio, Twitter feeds and who knows what else. That’s a bit of a high-profile example, but you can see the value that branding has for journalists these days. The more that the editorial people – and thought leaders – where you work can build their brand, the bigger the audience can be for them and the company.

I encourage anyone at your company who writes or leads to register for tomorrow’s webinar titled Personal Branding for Journalists. This is a great example of the value of your new SIIA/SIPA/ABM membership. ABM is delivering this webinar, featuring Robin J. Phillips, digital director of the Reynolds Center for Business, free for members. The cost is $125 for non-members. It will take place from 2-3 p.m Eastern. The presentation was originally created for the Kiplinger Program at Ohio State University in April 2012. (More on your membership value: On Oct. 31, ABM will present a webinar on Developing a Video Content Strategy.)

Said Phillips: “People have an image of who you are … whether you like it or not. First things first, it’s important to know who you are, what you offer and then take control of your image so others get the picture.”

“Branding has been part of journalism going back to Nellie Bly, Hunter S. Thompson … these were people known for their brand of journalism,” Sree Sreenivasan, dean of student affairs and digital media professor at Columbia Journalism School, told Poynter in March. What has changed, he said, is the speed at which journalists today can develop such a brand.

What has also changed is the encouragement by publishers to their journalists to get out there as much as possible. I remember back in those early times I mentioned, I had to get permission to do a radio interview about an event that I covered. Today, reporters who appear on radio or TV and have a strong social media presence are coveted. It means more publicity and gravitas for the publishing entity.

In a quote that tells you why personal branding of journalists is good for the company, Brittney Gilbert, social media editor for NBC Bay Area, told Poynter: “People would much rather interact with NBC Bay Area’s meteorologist or sports reporter than a faceless entity such as NBC.”

That’s true with blogging as well; it brings the blogger—and company—closer to your audience. At the Las Vegas Marketing Conference, Dec. 11-13, we will have a session on team blogging. This can help an entire team build its brand. SIPA members Astek and AHC Media do a great job with this. I recall reading a post on Astek by Johnny Moran, who I had never talked with or met. We exchanged emails and it felt like I had a new source to use. With excellent posts like a recent one on Google Analytics, Moran establishes his voice and contributes to the company’s loose and very knowledgeable persona.

Your reporters can be writing, blogging, tweeting, conducting podcasts and anything else that would help establish them as thought leaders. (Hopefully, sleeping falls in there somewhere.) In this day and age and with a few rules built in, it should all reflect well on the company. Tune into tomorrow’s webinar for more.

 

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

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SIPAlert Daily – Choosing the right business model for your mobile and the process one member went through

September 24, 2013 By

“What are you trying to accomplish [through mobile]?” asked Larry Schwartz, president of Newstex, during last week’s second webinar—titled Monetization and Business Models—of SIIA’s new Mobile Essentials series.

Of course, you want to be seen, heard and found, and building a mobile app is a good way to do that. “Mobile Internet traffic is building very quickly and desktop access is falling off,” Schwartz said. Apps now account for 82% of all mobile access. He suggested that you look at the percentage of your traffic that is coming from mobile. It’s probably growing.

[This webinar with the full presentation is now posted on the SIIA website for SIIA/SIPA/ABM members to access.]

Schwartz then proceeded to lay out the various business models that should drive a publisher’s mobile strategy:

1. Mobile extension to desktop product. The purpose is not to replicate your desktop product, but to provide a mobile product to complement it. For example, CQ did this and it has enhanced the value of their content. The app is free to download from the app store, but users need a log-in and password from CQ.

2. Newsstand subscription. If you publish your content no more than once every 24 hours and bundle your content into issues, then the Apple newsstand app may for you. Your app will be available in both the app and newsstand store. “Our experience is you should publish at least four issues per year,” Schwartz said. Apple charges 30% fee, but they handle all the side issues. “If you’re interested in expanding to the international market, Apple’s a great way to do it. I think they’re in more than 225 countries now.”

3. Freemium model. It’s designed to drive awareness and interest in your content in a free app while generating upscale opportunities to the free version. The Guardian uses this model for their mobile app. You can access content on an ad-supported basis or pay 69p for their premium tier (the lowest price allowed in the U.K.). The key to success is that the free version must be able to stand on its own, Schwartz said.

4. Digital Print Bundle. This is a current favorite among publishers because it provides a means to extend the life of your print to figure out how to replace those dollars. It allows publishers to experiment. A magazine like Consumer Reports will give their print subscribers access to their digital tools—a kind of best of both worlds.

5. Sponsored or ad-supported app. These treat mobile as a specialty product. The CQ Roll Call app, for instance, is ad supported and can be downloaded free from the Apple store. Banners can be placed in the story. You must think through the design for this to work. Size and placement do matter here.

6. Native ads. These are effective but controversial—indeed, the FTC has started to look into them—because the advertiser seeks to gain attention by providing content in the context of the user experience. Native ads match the form and function of the content. If they are publisher produced, then it’s similar to an advertorial. The intent is to make paid ads feel less intrusive.

7. Transactional or In-App purchase. Allows you to download a free app and then make a purchase to keep using it or to upgrade the app by using Apple’s In-app system. Amazon has also just launched a system. LexisNexis offers a free trial and then you choose a subscription level. It’s also very international and you can sign in on multiple devices.

Schwartz offered one last tip: Smart App banners. When a user comes in on their IOS device using Safari, they would see a pop-up banner that shows the app on their iPad. If they have the app, it comes up. If they don’t, it tells you to download it.

 

Next up was Ed Keating, chief content officer for BLR and in charge of new products. BLR has a long history of experimentation, first with the HR Daily Advisor. “Luckily, we’ve migrated to a new [mobile] platform,” Keating said. “It just launched over the weekend—covers all of our verticals.”

What process did BLR use to get to that stage? There were three steps:

1. They researched their customers, checking their mobile traffic and what people said they want to use.

2. By working with an established provider—in this case, Newstex—they learned a lot.

3. They debated business models. How were they going to pay for this and how is this going to work within BLR’s business?

They did a lot of surveys and found differences in the breakdown of devices being used. The critical question they asked was, “What are you using mobile for?” They were reading news, taking training, keeping records. “What kind of workflow thing might we want to be thinking about?” Keating said they next asked. Interestingly, there was not a big difference between their paid and unpaid audience.

What were the challenges? “On the strategic side, are you mobile first or mobile second?” Keating asked. “We were probably mobile third. We have been digital for a long time and still have print products and need to support those. But our mobile traffic is up.

“How do we integrate mobile platforms into our overall strategy? The challenge for BLR products is that their use is episodic,” Keating continued. “They answer questions. If people are not getting a lot of questions, what do you do? Mobile allows us to be in their forefront all the time. We can be more pervasive in their day. Trying to own your customers share of day is a good goal and metric.”

From the operational side, here were BLR’s concerns:

1. How do you budget? It’s like the Internet. You just need it.

2. Content readiness. Self-explanatory.

3. Not built here. BLR had some mobile expertise in Tennessee. But because no one there owned it, it “did not get in [their] way.”

4. Ignorance. “We don’t know what we don’t know,” Keating said.

5. Timeline. That was tough. Who owned it? “It took us forever to get the thing launched,” Keating said. “Where in the organization should this thing live?” You need your top people to communicate.

6. Business model. How do you pay for this? “We got caught up on that one,” Keating said. “We played around with a couple ways to make this work for us.”

The sponsored and ad-supported model proved most appealing. “BLR has been building an ad business here—growing quite well,” Keating said. “It was great to have something else to put in the bags of our sales reps. Having mobile was a logical extension. And maybe it could grow towards [a] Freemium [model].”

The ad-supported model was also the easiest way for BLR to get new names to follow. “It’s incredibly trackable and metric oriented.” BLR was already offering some free content to potential subscribers. With the added capabilities of the platform, they could ask for an email address and give a lot more functionality. That would make them more alluring.

Keating also had a final tip. At first, he said BLR looked around at what others do. “The most, well-thought out strategy came from the head of mobile at Thomson Reuters,” he said. “’We are striving to design and develop best-in-class platforms to facilitate agility, quality and consistency across products that will help people work as efficiently while mobile as they are in the office—and seamlessly no matter what platform they use.’

“For many of us in the SIPA, ABM and SIIA world, that is something to strive for. Can we match where our customers want to go?”

 

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

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SIPAlert Daily: Power shift in sales relationship calls for new rules

September 23, 2013 By

“There’s always been a debate – do you invest in the idea or the person?” said Tom Perkins, the legendary venture capitalist, at AOL’s TechCrunch show earlier this month. “I feel you invest in the idea because bad people don’t have good ideas,” Perkins said. “That’s a very simple formula. When I used to look at business plans, I would look at the back pages and if the numbers were big, I’d look at the front to see what kind of business it was. Pretty sophisticated.”

I thought of this quote reading an interview yesterday with Daniel Pink, the author of To Sell Is Human,” in The Washington Post. Asked what the hardest sell is, he responded, “It’s harder to sell a really bad idea than a really good idea. I think that’s always been true, but I think it’s become even harder to sell a really bad idea today because you’re so easily exposed.”

He said that we have gone from a world of “information asymmetry”—where the seller always had more information than the buyer—to information parity. So “you have to take the high road: be more honest, more direct, more transparent.” Customers’ ability to “talk back” and “do battle” has changed the landscape, Pink added.

That landscape will be explored further by SIPA at its Marketing Conference in Las Vegas, Dec. 11. Fortunately for attendees, Bobby Edgil, BLR’s director of sales, and Lexie Gross, BVR’s VP of sales, will return to lead what was a very well-received Pre-Conference Workshop last year in Miami titled, Sales Management for Online Publishers. This truly is a workshop. Gross and Edgil are not theorists; they are doers.

They believe that your best practices should be shared among all of your marketers and salespeople. Whether that happens during meetings or other in-house communications doesn’t matter as much as that it just happens. Edgil told how customer service and sales are now side by side at BLR—to “make sure the managers get along and communicate.” It’s not ideal if your customers make a purchase and then hit a roadblock on how to use it. Gross also emphasized the importance of communication vehicles, one being customer surveys which she uses as a tool for product development and referrals. Another being hand-written notes.

In his interview, Pink also talked about the value of good communication. He has three new ABCs to replace what he calls the outdated ones of Always Be Closing. “Attunement: Can you get out of your head and into someone else’s head, see their point of view? Buoyancy: Buoyancy is staying afloat in what one salesperson I interviewed called ‘an ocean of rejection.’ Clarity: being able to curate, distill, make sense of information, and identify problems people didn’t realize they have.”

Pink has strong feelings on who makes the best sales people. He believes that the idea of the extrovert naturally being best “is fundamentally not true. The best people are what researchers call ambiverts. Like ambidextrous, they’re in the middle: a little bit introverted, a little bit extroverted. Research shows that most of us are ambiverts. Some of us are very strong introverts, some of us are very strong extroverts—but very strong extroverts and very strong introverts aren’t good at sales.”

He also advises you to look for people who are confident. But while saying “I am awesome” and “I got this” is better than not doing anything at all, he would like to see more self-interrogative talk from sales people like, “Can I do this?”

“Questions elicit an active response.” Pink said. “In answering your question, you prepare yourself. You go over your game plan. You say, ‘Yeah, I can do this. Last time I did it, but I was a little nervous and talked a bit too fast, so I am going to slow down.’ You are preparing. You are like an athlete at batting practice before the game.”

And you look for good ideas to take a swing at.

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

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SIIA Announces 2013 Previews Companies: Europe’s Top Early Stage Digital Content Companies

September 23, 2013 By

SIIA today announced the 2013 Previews Companies – Europe’s most innovative early stage content or content technology companies. The six companies will present at the Digital Content & Media Summit, held at One Wimpole Street in London September 23-25, to showcase their creative solutions before an audience of industry leaders, potential clients, and media.

The Digital Content & Media Summit is the premier event for digital media and publishing executives. The three-day conference will provide a global perspective on the 10 most pressing digital content and media challenges and trends.  Topics include new ways to charge for digital content, turning free users into paying customers, developing compelling mobile products, expanding media brands internationally, successful collaborative advertising, and more.

The SIIA Previews Program selects and then spotlights the next generation of the most innovative new content creators, aggregators and technology vendors. During sessions held throughout the Digital Content & Media Summit, company CEOs will highlight the innovations that have made them successful.

[Read more...]

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2013 Model of Excellence Companies Unveiled

September 23, 2013 By

For 10 years, the Model of Excellence program has answered one question: who is re-setting the standards for data excellence?
Each year, the InfoCommerce Group, reviews the data industry landscape to identify the data products that are pioneering or perfecting new business models, exhibit best practices or offer technological innovation. The results are the Model of Excellence that are honored throughout the DataContent Conference.
During the “Excellence in Action” showcase session, we’ll present to the audience both examples of companies with intriguing business models that can offer insights and inspiration to other publishers, as well as new ways to think about and apply data. The session is designed as a showcase, so presenters are encouraged to provide a brief overview of their products and talk about their businesses generally. Here are a few teasers to get started:

  • Equilar is based on public domain data, and will describe what’s involved in normalizing and enhancing it so that it can become premium-value content.
    Equilar MOE Profile
  • Segmint will  highlight the power and value of this real life example of Big Data at work, with near-real-time analytics and predictive models (and how this technology can be applied to other markets and databases). Segmint MOE Profile
  • Enigma provides consolidated access to thousands of public domain databases whose owners generates immense amounts of high-value data at little or no cost, but have no real incentive to make it easily accessible. Enigma MOE Profile
  • FindTheCompany mixes public domain,licensed and harvested data, yielding deep profiles and insights that many publishers have talked about but few have delivered.

Register Now

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SIPAlert Daily – ‘You have to care about what people want’

September 19, 2013 By

Speaking about the changes that journalism has undergone, former Atlanta Journal-Constitution government and public affairs editor and current George Washington University professor Al May said that when they first told him that he had to put his email address at the end of his story, he was flabbergasted. “I’ll be deluged,” he thought. “Instead,” he laughed, “it was, ‘Is anybody out there?’”

I think any writer in today’s age has wondered that at times. Why am I hearing from people on this topic and not that one? The story on that one is better! It used to be, said Geneva Overholser, Pulitzer Prize winner and former director of USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism, that journalists published what they thought the public needed to know. Now the mechanisms are in place to find out.

“Fundamentally, journalists do need to care about what [their audience] is interested in,” Overholser said. “You have to care about what people want.”

The occasion for this discussion was a talk this week at GWU’s School of Media and Public Affairs on Reinventing Professionalism: Journalism and News in Global Perspective. How do we maintain that level of professionalism for journalists in this new age when everyone is a writer? People may not want to pay for great journalism, but they probably won’t pay for bad journalism either. May’s story—plus the ensuing discussion—led to one of today’s fundamental questions: Are we trying hard enough to find out what our audience wants?

Specialized publishing has the advantage of a niche community that you are helping to foster with resources and information. Building that community and providing it a forum then becomes a huge factor. How are you listening to your audience? Are you getting comments from articles or blog posts? Are you testing? Are you talking to them at your live events and through social media? Are you monitoring Twitter? Do they have their own forum? Are you surveying at the end of webinars? It’s probably worth an incentive or two to get that feedback.

The panelists still believe in the power of good journalism. However, they did wonder aloud, “How do you make that part of someone’s everyday routine?” Columbia Journalism School Professor Michael Schudson said he was surprised that when he visited a music school, they were not just teaching musicianship. They were also teaching entrepreneurship. It’s something journalism can learn from, he said.

“It’s still a great moment to be a journalist,” Overholser said. “I don’t think professionalism has been undermined [by citizen journalism].” You would just hope that people will realize the value of “having a professional journalism source as part of their daily diet.” This is also part of the reason that building your mobile business becomes essential. If you are to succeed at supplying a “daily diet” to your community, then it has to look appealing on every platform.

Overholser said that the most important element today is the “collaboration between journalist and reader.” Do they trust us? Are we telling them what they need to know? Do they follow you? It may just be that the definition of good journalism has changed. Yesterday it was more about ethics and fancy prose. Today, good may just mean helpful.

She ended by using a Churchill quote to defend journalism: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” Journalism may not be perfect any more—indeed, citizen journalism can make us cringe at times—but it’s still what some of us signed up for and remain passionate about. Nobody said it was going to be easy.

 

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

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SIPAlert Daily – Guidelines for your paywall strategy

September 18, 2013 By

One day, the Toronto Star newspaper launches a paywall—a “new paid digital subscription program that will allow readers to receive full access to all of the award-winning content on our website across all devices…” says publisher John Cruickshank. Another day, the San Francisco Chronicle drops its paywall after just two months. “The SFChronicle.com site will continue to provide readers with an online version that replicates a newspaper experience and reflects the changes in the news…”

This summer, the Sun, Britain’s largest newspaper, launched a new digital subscription package that turned their website into a paywall, where you have to take out a membership to access. It was called exciting at the time. Two days ago, it was called “disastrous” in a blogpost in The Guardian. (Monthly site visits down by 62.4% from 37.3m visits in July to 14.4m visits in August.) Something about codes in the newspaper that could be redeemed sounded way too complicated.

In specialized publishing, the landscape is also varied. Joe May of Pro Farmer told me that they are going to offer more free content in hopes of lead generation. Others prefer to keep most of their content behind a wall/gate/enclosure. Regardless, you can see that there is no consensus on what works best. After an excellent discussion on the SIPA Member Listserv a couple months ago, Molly Lindblom, principal of Business Transformations, adeptly and kindly wrote up the following: 

A Guide to Formulating Your Paywall/Free Content Strategy

1. Define the objective. Are you trying to drive traffic to support an ad model? Generate leads? Upsell? Build a community? Lots of ways to go. Defining your objective will help you determine your strategy and ways to measure success. Let’s go with Generating Leads.

Strategies:

- Consider your target. A high level decision maker (VP,CEO, CFO) may require a different offer such as a white paper or strategic industry analysis, etc. A director/manager may find news or analysis on a very specific topic rings their bell.

- Require something in kind. Contact info (name, title, company name, email) and/or other commitments such as spending 10 minutes on a call to provide feedback on a new product or answering a five-question survey. Not only does this help you achieve your goals, it’s a way to reinforce the value of the content that is being given away and moves the sale along.

- Don’t let them get their fill through a freebie. Limit free trial duration and restrict content access. There needs to be incentive to purchase.

- Build awareness/drive traffic. Email, SEO/key words and highly targeted paid Google ads are just a few ways to do this.

- Name it well. The name should reinforce the value of paid vs. free. A few options:

** Levels: Silver, Gold and Platinum or Value vs. Premium 

** Description: Today’s Headlines vs. In-depth Analysis 

** End Benefit: Quick Tips vs. Insight

- Always brand. Include your brand—such as MDM Premium. If you get nothing else, you will build brand recognition.

2. Define next steps. Sales or customer support should follow up on leads within a few days if not same day so they don’t go cold. Sign up for a free offer is an indicator of immediate need for your content. If you are entirely marketing driven, nurture the lead to build knowledge of your offerings, benefits and special incentives. This can be time consuming but it generally pays off.

3. Metrics. Make sure you have a measurable goal so you can determine what worked/didn’t work (opens, click throughs, time spent on site, bounces, leads generated, alignment of leads with target market, content accessed, sales driven) so you can determine how to modify your campaign going forward.

 

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

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