Here are some interesting notes:

1. Here comes mobile. Tablet usage has doubled in the 10 months since the last survey. In many countries, smartphone users are now in the majority, and most of them use these devices to access news every week. Across all the countries surveyed, 46% use a smartphone and 31% say they used the device for news at least once in the past week. (See the next Mobile Essentials webinar Oct. 24.)

2. Get to know your audience better. “In all countries we asked if people agreed that they preferred to get news from sites they know and trust. The figures were universally high, with 90% supporting the proposition in Brazil, 82% in the US, and 77% in the UK.”

3. Twitter, etc. may be as important as SEO. Social media is now rated more important than search among the ‘under 45s’. In the U.S. 47% of under 45s use social media to find news. (How’s your social media involvement?) In the U.K. it’s only 27%. (Hear a social media case study at the Las Vegas Marketing Conference.)

4. Encourage your audience to share. In the UK 18% had shared a news story in the last week by email or social network but among those actively interested in news the figures are much higher. Almost a third of those with a high interest in news share a news link at least once a week.

5. Publishing information daily (and maybe at various times of day) makes sense. Only older people are staying on any schedule for accessing news. Younger people tend to access news at all times, and “even the 35–44s seem to be losing the commitment for appointment-to-view news bulletins in the early and late evening.”

6. Americans like local. We have the highest interest of any country in news about our city or town (59%). (More women indicated that as an interest than men.) We are near the lowest to be interested in news about technology or science (26%). Wonder if that has anything to do with our students’ test scores in those areas.

7. Find tablet users. While smartphone users say the convenience not the experience draws them, tablet users like the experience more than PCs. Tablet users are also more likely to pay for news than smartphone users.

8. Americans consume video and audio. Are you using any? Only Brazil was higher (64%) for consuming news through video and audio than Americans (55%). (See a hands-on video session in Las Vegas.)

9. Check your analytics. People in the UK find news more by trusted brands, where in the U.S. people use more social and search. In both countries, the number of people who use search does not vary much by age. Of course, social does vary by age when it comes to search, but it again differs by country. In the UK, under 45s are three times as likely to use social for search; in the U.S., the numbers are much closer (38% to 23%).

10. Have you built your app yet? Those who use smartphones and tablets are more likely to go straight to a news brand. “The data also indicate that certain mechanisms – like social newsreading apps and ‘push’ news alerts – are disproportionately used on these devices to discover news content.”

11. Appeal to smartphone users to reach out. Of those who share news in the UK, 56% do so through Facebook, 40% through email and 26% through Twitter. In the U.S., Apple smartphone users are 41% more likely to share news than other digital news users.

Interesting stuff. Again access it here.

 To subscribe to SIPAlert Daily, go to the SIIA site.

Ronn 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

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 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

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 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

“Things have changed a lot in the last 18 months,” he said. “There are a lot more self-serve tools. The hardest thing to figure out [for going mobile] is, how are you going to use it? What’s the purpose? What’s the model? There are some people who take all their time trying to find the perfect colors. Really.”

Schwartz will join Ed Keating, chief content officer for BLR, this Thursday in the second of SIIA’s Mobile Essentials Webinar series—Monetization and Business Models. SIPA/SIIA/ABM members can listen free by registering here. The first webinar made the business case; this one will help you build the right model.

Considering that this is just an hour of your time about something that might become a huge percentage of your business, it’s highly recommended. Mobile commerce now accounts for about one out of every 10 e-commerce dollars. Integrating mobile platforms into your overall business models and strategy is crucial.

A blog post on the comScore website at the end of last month listed five things that every marketer should know on this topic. It’s a helpful list:

1. Be there. “One out of every three monthly visitors to the average digital retailer website comes exclusively on mobile platforms. …retailers who do not (at a minimum) optimize their mobile browsing experience or introduce mobile apps are effectively turning away a third of their potential customers.”

2. Know thy customer. “Mobile apps drive smartphone retail engagement, while mobile browsing wins on tablets.” You probably don’t have the time or resources “to develop a fully optimized experience for every platform. Knowing how your customers engage with retail on their phones and tablets can help you better prioritize your efforts.

3. Prioritize. “Smartphones drive a higher share of m-commerce dollars than tablets, but less on a per device basis.” Tablets are gaining in numbers, however, so you’ll have an interesting decision on where to first focus your user experience.

4. Know thy content. “Retail category browsing can vary considerably by platform.” Basically it’s common sense but still important to think about. Is there a visual component to what you are selling or how you are selling? Perhaps you want people to see charts and graphs in your marketing? Speakers’ faces. That might do better on tablets, where apparel and home furnishing sales excel. Interestingly, health care is the only category listed that does better on smartphones, though it’s pretty close on books and consumer electronics.

5. Plan now. “M-commerce spending seasonality shows wider variance than traditional e-commerce.” It may be quiet now, but with holiday season lurking, expect a huge jump. “Consumers…are also increasingly comfortable using [their devices] to transact. Retailers with an advanced understanding of m-commerce will be able to most effectively deploy their assets and marketing resources during the year’s most crucial spending period.”

Schwartz went on to show me—on his tablet—a list of Time Inc.’s 25 top love story films of all time. It was impeccably designed. “They could easily do 100 and get sponsors for it,” he said. In other words, the sky’s the limit.

U.S. adults will spend more media time on mobile this year (19.8%) than on their laptops and PCs (19.5%). Tablets are sparking this trend. Last year, 10% of tablet time was spent watching videos; this year it’s 19%. Join us in this important webinar series. Register here now.

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

Ronn 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

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 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

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 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