In my previous post, Stephanie Williford of EB Medicine spoke about the tremendous engagement they've been getting since they started posting COVID-19 resources. One article in particular has garnered 340,000 views when a typical, popular article used to get 10,000.   Of course, EB Medicine is not alone. Many publishers and associations have seen big jumps in their visitors and clicks due to coronavirus coverage and resource sites they've developed. The challenge for most will be keeping that engagement—and hopefully in many cases subscriptions—after the crisis has abated or in a year from now for renewals.   Here are some ideas:   Examine previous spikes and identify the readers who stayed and who left. That comes from Robbie Kelman Baxter, author of The Forever Transaction and a past SIPA keynote speaker, in an article on the What's New in Publishing site. Can you tell why they might have stayed or perhaps what ...

"Every day is hard. Often, there's very little or nothing they can do. [In addition to patients,] they see their own colleagues pass away... It's very stressful. Plus their hours might be getting cut. Many of them have had their budgets frozen because many hospitals and emergency departments are really suffering right now. They're not getting business from elective surgeries and overall volume in EDs [emergency departments] is actually down."   That was from a conversation I had with Stephanie Williford, CEO of EB Medicine and a new SIPA executive board member, a few weeks ago. She was describing many of her customers who are ED personnel and ER doctors. I had interviewed people on the frontlines of COVID-19 before, but more in loans and banks and people hurting that way.   This was different.   "They have to deal with all of this. And then we have to assess that and figure out how to respond." If t ...

Putting COVID-19 resource sections prominently on your site and in front of any paywall you might have seems to be a win-win-win proposition at this point. On Saturday Stephanie Williford, CEO of SIPA member EB Medicine, posted this on the Discussion Forum in response to an article about a subscription jump at Wired.   "We put our COVID content in front of the paywall on March 3rd and have seen an explosion in website traffic (153% increase) and a modest increase in subscriptions (9%) since the same time period last year," wrote Williford. "We're pretty happy with that all things considered—particularly since our customers (emergency physicians) are the ones on the frontlines managing this crisis. (They certainly have much bigger things to worry about right now than subscribing!) We also think the goodwill and brand awareness we're generating now will pay off in the long run. Plus, like the article below says, it was the right thing to do."   So ...

In a discussion on new product development last week on the Discussion Forum, a member was looking for a new product development worksheet—something that "gave the editorial and development teams a starting point for creating the product or service."   Stephanie Williford, CEO of EB Medicine, responded that they "developed something like that several years ago and have found it to be very helpful. We actually created a three-step process; step 1 is filling out an initial worksheet... If the idea passes that step, then it goes to the next one, which is a more detailed worksheet and business cases analysis."   From there, Ed Coburn, president of Cabot Wealth Network, made those forms generic and combined them into a single document for others who may want to use this. It's titled Product Development Process Template and now sits in the Sample and Model Documents section of our website.    Take a look at these documents for your own use ...

We know the huge hit that events are taking now. And we encourage everyone to register for next Thursday’s SIPA/AM&P/Connectiv webinar titled Coronavirus and Your Events: How to Make Decisions that Protect Your Business and the Safety of Your Staff, that will include our own Brian Cuthbert from Diversified Communications..

On a recent webinar titled Podcasting for Publishers: How Podcasts Can Deliver Qualified Leads and Bottom-Line Revenue for Minimal Investment, Lynn Freer, president of Spidell Publishing, told about running into a tax accountant listener at one of her events. He kidded her about his wife wondering who that woman with the great voice is who he's conversing with every Sunday morning.

A common thread in film festivals these days is to continue the momentum all year round. The Annapolis Film Festival, which takes place in March, is showing a documentary featured called Toxic Beauty next Tuesday. The DC Environmental Film Festival, perhaps Washington's best film festival—also in March—screens films every month, congratulates their filmmakers on achievements through the year, blogs each month and sponsors other mini-events.

On the phone last week, Stephanie Williford, CEO of EB Medicine, spoke to me excitedly about SIPA's new Executive Councils, groups that will consist of 12 niche publishers who meet by video conference 11 times a year, plus once a year for an in-person meeting in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with SIPA's annual conference in June.

I once had a job writing scripts for a daily 90-second radio show for Joe Gibbs, the nice-as-can-be, Hall of Fame coach of the Washington Redskins. He did not enjoy recording it and felt more comfortable reading from a script. I had gotten to know how he spoke so I could add in the "heys" and "for you fans" and more of his favorite sayings. But still I did cringe when my morning alarm would ring and I would hear him stiffly reading my lines.

What do people trust most these days? It's not government, media, for-profit organizations or even nonprofit organizations. It's online reviews. According to a study last year, a whopping 91% of people trust an online review, even if they don't know the person behind it.