digital content

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

August 28, 2013 By Ronn Levine

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 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: digital content, Mobility

Make money from digital content: four steps to digital transformation

August 13, 2013 By Carolyn Morgan

Collaborating with competitors on digital content

How can publishers turn content assets and data into new digital content businesses, and what can they learn from the digital transformation of healthcare, aviation and public sector organisations? The creative database engineers at MarkLogic have summed up the experiences of over 300 customers into four steps to guide your digital content transformation, with case studies from around the world… [Read more...]

Share|

Filed Under: SIIA UK Tagged With: digital content, MarkLogic Corporation

SIIA’s Perspective on Open Educational Resources

April 30, 2013 By Mark Schneiderman

Last month, SIIA released a Guide to Open Educational Resources (OER) to help inform the field about the benefits, challenges and total costs that must be considered around the funding, development and adoption of educational resources, including OER. Included in the Guide was an SIIA editorial sharing our perspective and public policy recommendations.

SIIA views open educational resources (OER) as one of many appropriate models for the development and distribution of content needed to meet the needs of students and educators. SIIA expects that future educational needs will be addressed by a mix of instructional materials, including OER, and that there is a critical, though perhaps evolving role for commercial partners and proprietary models.

SIIA recognizes that interest in OER among government agencies and education decision makers, as well as many non-profit entities and foundations, appears driven largely by the goals of reducing costs, improving access, providing quality, and supporting educator/student customization of their content. SIIA urges the community of OER investors (e.g., legislators and education officials) and users to consider the following:

Even in an age of common learning standards, the need to personalize learning will continue to require a robust choice of curricular resources – proprietary and OER – and related technology tools and services. Investments by government authorities or other organizations based on the assumption they can simply ‘build it once’ could inappropriately limit options. No single resource or set of resources will be sufficient to meet the wide range of educational needs.
The principles of academic freedom and personalization of learning require that government agencies and educational institutions continue to support educational choice. They should not in the future limit the use of funds to only the development/adoption of OER, but instead should continue ensuring grant and other funding for acquisition/implementation of any and all resources that meet the particular educational need, whether OER or proprietary.
To meet diverse and evolving educational needs, the nation’s education sector demands an environment that encourages R&D investment – public and private, for-profit and non-profit – to ensure ever more innovative and effective resources. Education leaders should strive for a sector that encourages investment and competition, provides resource choice, and rewards innovation.
Educational resources, including OER, require not only the initial investment, but as importantly must budget for the total, long-term cost of development and use. These ongoing and recurring costs include user training/support, as well as content hosting and maintenance, content updates, and technology updates that, according to some SIIA members, can often require as much as an additional 20% annual cost.
When making cost-benefit calculations and comparisons, it is important to consider these total initial and ongoing costs of development and adoption. Comparisons require both short-term and long-term factors, as well as recognition of both individual use and systemic impact.
Institutional, local, or state adoptions of content should use the same review standards, criteria, and process when the content is of the same or similar type – e.g., core, supplemental, etc. – no matter whether OER, commercial or other license.
To the degree that public funds are invested in the development of (open) educational resources, they are best targeted to address gaps where quality resources are not currently available to meet educational needs. In addition, such public investments should consider the benefits of public-private partnerships or related models that ensure an ongoing user commitment and a recurring revenue stream needed to update, support, and sustain the resource over time.
To the degree that government funds are invested in the development of OER, those resources should be available through a CC BY license allowing third parties to revise, reuse, remix and redistribute the resource, including commercially. An NC license – prohibiting others from using the work for commercial purposes – would be counter to the public policy goal of leveraging public funds to have the widest impact on innovation, cost-savings, access, and diversity of resources.

SIIA looks forward to working further with all stakeholders to consider the opportunities and challenges of OER and other ways to ensure the availability of ever more choice of innovative and effective resources to meet evolving educational needs. SIIA’s Ed Tech Industry Summit next week in San Francisco will inlcude a panel discussion about OER impact and opportunities for SIIA members that will include the SIIA Guide co-authors and Creative Commons CEO Cathy Casserly.

Mark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA.

Share|

Filed Under: Ed Tech Business Forum, Education, Education Policies, Education Policy, Policy, Postsecondary, Uncategorized Tagged With: creative commons, digital content, Education, education policy, education technology, instructional materials, OER, open educational resources, publisher

SIIA Testimony to NY Education Reform Commission Calls for School System Redesign to Personalize Learning through Technology

October 17, 2012 By Mark Schneiderman

I had the opportunity yesterday to provide invited testimony to the “New NY Education Reform Commission” appointed by NY Governor Andrew Cuomo to study and make recommendations for the reform and improvement of the state’s education system. My submitted written testimony describes a comprehensive vision for redesigning education to pesonalize learning through technology, and then makes dozens of reccommendations around each of the Commission’s seven objectives.

My October 16 oral testimony is provided below and video archived (at 02:02:40):

On behalf of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) and our 500 high-tech companies, thank you for inviting me today. I am Mark Schneiderman, SIIA’s senior director of education policy.

SIIA agrees with the Commission that, “Future generations of students cannot compete unless we dramatically reform our education system.”

Our industrial-age education practices are largely unchanged over a century or more:
- Too many students are disengaged, not due to lack of technology, but from undifferentiated resources, rote one-to-many instruction, and lack of attention to 21st century skills.
- Time and place are constants, but learning is variable.

Instead, our education system must be fundamentally reengineered from a mass production, teaching model to a student-centered, personalized learning model to address the dramatic change in student daily lives, diversity and expectations.

The mandate is not for marginal change, but for: redesign to free learning from the physical limitations of time, place and paper; and instead customize instructional resources, strategies, and schedules to dynamically address each student’s unique abilities, interests and needs.

The redesign of education can take place without technology and digital learning, but not at scale. Technology is a teaching force multiplier and a learning accelerator.

This doesn’t mean computers replace teachers, or that all learning takes place online.

It does mean that we use the technology:
1. to collect and analyze extensive student learning data to a degree not otherwise possible;
2. to provide a differentiation of interactive, multimedia teaching and learning resources and student creativity and collaboration tools not possible from one teacher, book or classroom; and
3. to free teacher time from rote and administrative activities to redirect to more value-added instruction.

The result is a more effective teacher, a more highly engaged and better performing learner, and a more productive system.

SIIA’s 2012 Vision K-20 Survey of 1,600 educators found that interest in digital learning is high at about 75%, but only about 25% rate actual technology access and use as high by their peers and institutions.

Here are 10 SIIA recommendations to the Commission and state:

1. Eliminate the Carnegie unit (credit for seat time) as the measure of learning and replace it with a competency-based model that provides credit, progression and graduation based upon demonstrated mastery and performance.

2. Eliminate fixed, agrarian-age definitions of the hours of the school day and the days of the school year and instead provide flexibility for 24/7/365 learning as needed for student mastery.

3. Ensure all teachers have access to a minimum slate of digital tools and supports provided to other professionals, including instructional technology coaches and virtual peer learning networks.

4. Ensure all educators have the skills needed to personalize learning and leverage technology, including by updating the curriculum of teachers colleges as well as teacher licensure and certification requirements.

5. Encourage and support a shift from print-only curriculum to instead provide students with anytime, everywhere access to interactive digital content and online learning.

6. Create a statewide online learning authority for approval and oversight of virtual learning providers to New York students and schools, and loosen arbitrary limits.

7. Invest to ensure equity of technology and digital learning access to change the education cost-curve and provide opportunity to learn, while providing increased local flexibility in the use of state grant funds to meet unique local needs.

8. Set minimum expectations for school/teacher electronic communication with parents and families and support home access to student performance data, assignments and curriculum.

9. Support more flexible higher education policies that end seat-time requirements, allow students to demonstrate prior learning and complete course modules that fit their learning gaps, and receive student aid for study toward skills certifications valued in the job market.

10. Finally, recognize the role of the private sector, which invests hundreds of millions of dollars each year to develop and deliver educational technologies and digital learning. Support public-private research partnerships, and reform the RFP process to enable the private sector to share their expertise, vision and innovative business models.

Our nation’s continued success will require that our educational system adopt modern methods and means to remain not effective and relevant in the 21st century.

On behalf of SIIA and our member high-tech companies, I look forward to working with the Commission to further identify and advance a reform plan for New York education.

Mark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA.

Share|

Filed Under: Ed Tech Government Forum, Education, Education Policies, Education Policy, Legislation, Personalized Learning, Policy, Postsecondary, Uncategorized Tagged With: blended learning, digital content, ed-tech, Education, education policy, education technology, innovation, New NY Education Reform Commission, online learning, Personalized Learning, policy, putting students first, puttingstudentsfirst

Leaders or Laggards: The State Role in the Shift to Digital Content

September 7, 2012 By Mark Schneiderman

The focus at the recent annual meeting of the State Instructional Materials Review Association (SIMRA) was the shift from print to digital. While paper weight and book binding standards remain on their agenda, the shift is symbolized in part by this group’s recent name change that replaced “textbooks” with “instructional materials.” I had the opportunity to present at the meeting, and had some timely discussions about the evolving state role in the digital world. Texas (see SIIA webinar), Florida (see SIIA summary) and West Virginia are among the states most proactive in helping lead their schools into the digital content future, while many states (with leadership from their SIMRA-member adoption director) are trying to catch up with their districts and understand their evolving roles and rules. A parallel but accelerated shift to digital is underway in state assessments with the leadership of PARCC and SBAC.

As background, SIMRA members administer the process used in 20+ states for instructional materials adoption, including identifying curriculum and technical requirements, soliciting publisher submissions, managing the peer review criteria and process, and coordinating the school procurement of approved materials (including with state funds to buy materials in states such as Texas, California and Florida). SIIA has advocated for years the need to update legacy rules that often create barriers to adoption of digital and online resources, and therefore limit local choice. While often this is simply about correcting for unintended consequences of legacy print rules, the issues are often far more complicated and reflect the still evolving views of instructional materials in the digital age. A leading example is dynamic content: State policies have traditionally required that content remain unchanged over the course of the six year adoption cycle, while digital resources can be seamlessly updated to remain current, accurate and meet evolving curriculum and pedagogical needs. Not surprisingly, SIIA has long advocated the flexibility for content to be updated and improved during the period of adoption.

Here are a few other trends identified at the SIMRA meeting:

State budget shortages continue, causing many states to delay adoption cycles or reduce funding and leaving many teachers and students with increasingly outdated materials.
Common Core State Standards are central to the process, but many state cycles are not aligned and adjustments are often not possible given the overall budget shortages.
Fewer states are funding instructional materials. In the traditional model, states paid for instructional materials, providing them the leverage to determine which materials are to be used. That is often no longer the case.
States are increasingly providing local control such that school districts can buy state approved materials, but can also buy any other instructional resources as well.
Some states are asking whether they should continue to target only single, primary tools of instruction (i.e., textbooks or their digital equivalents), or whether they should also adopt, for example, digital learning objects and modules to support teachers in dynamically assembling resources to differentiate instruction and personalize learning.
Some states are allowing the use of instructional materials funds for the purchase of the technology hardware needed to access those materials, though priority in general still for content.

States are working with SIIA, publishers and other stakeholders to address new challenges in reviewing adaptive instructional software and other robust digital content. For example, how do they review the full resource in cases where each student may be provided a unique, dynamic pathway through the content (compared to the relative ease of reviewing a more linear (e)textbook).

Also, as digital content shifts from supplemental to primary, format and platform are also increasingly of concern. State agencies, on behalf of local educators, seek to ensure the content they purchase is accessible from multiple platforms, as well as increasingly from their students’ personal/home devices. Some have floated the requirement that digital content must be accessible from every platform through a common format. While interoperability is a key goal, SIIA recommends for industry evolution of common standards and against regulatory mandates that could block use of many widely used technologies. SIIA instead encourages that states focus on ensuring publishers disclose system requirements to empower local decision makers with the information they need to determine what platforms and resources best meet their needs. This will enable technology innovation and competition, enhance education choice, and ultimately ensure the needs of teachers and students are best addressed.

SIIA encourages states to further lead the print to digital transition. In doing so, they must recognize that there is not yet any single best technology, curriculum or instructional practice solution for the use of digital content. Therefore, most importantly, SIIA encourages states to provide the investment, regulatory flexibility and technical assistance districts need to innovate as educators collectively and individually determine the best path forward.

Mark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA.

Share|

Filed Under: Ed Tech Business Forum, Ed Tech Government Forum, Education, Education Policies, Education Policy, Legislation, Personalized Learning, Policy, Uncategorized Tagged With: digital content, ed-tech, Education, education policy, education technology, innovation, instructional materials, Personalized Learning, technology, textbook

Big Data: A Long Way from Plug-and-Play

May 18, 2012 By Jennifer Hansen

We are excited about our partnership with the InfoCommerce Group to produce DataContent 2012, coming up October 9-11 in Philadephia. The conference will focus on discovering the next big thing in publishing: The intersection of Data, Community and Markets at DataContent 2012. As we lead up to the conference, we will be highlighting posts from the InfoCommerce Blog which focus on the issues and topics we will be discussing at DataContent 2012. Enjoy!

Big Data: A Long Way from Plug-and-Play by Nancy Ciliberti

One of the key markets for all the new big data analytics providers is marketers themselves, a group that should be a natural for turning deep customer insight into increased revenue. But are they ready?

Well, according to a study by Columbia Business School and the New York American Marketing Association, although nearly all (91 percent) of marketers value and want to make data driven decisions, 29 percent report that their marketing departments have “too little or no customer/consumer data.” Thirty nine percent of the marketers surveyed said their data is collected too infrequently and “not real-time enough.” Two in five marketers admit that they cannot turn their data into actionable insight and about an equal number (36%) report that they have “lots of customer data,” but “don’t know what to do with it.”

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

Make money from digital content: four steps to digital transformation

SIIA’s Perspective on Open Educational Resources

SIIA Testimony to NY Education Reform Commission Calls for School System Redesign to Personalize Learning through Technology

Leaders or Laggards: The State Role in the Shift to Digital Content

Got Klout?

Big Data: A Long Way from Plug-and-Play

About SIIA