Building Content and Community for Publishers
The LA Times runs one of the few remaining stand-alone book sections in a daily newspaper. (The others are in The San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, New York Times and San Diego Union-Tribune.)
Dwindling ad budgets are eating away at many of the unique features that only some newspapers offer. I can only hope that most of this specialized content survives the transition to a working digital revenue model. More details here…
I came across some interesting information at Colin Crawford’s blog on IDG’s continued transformation from a print publisher to an online publisher. Colin is VP, New Business Development and Operations at IDG. Aside from research and expos, IDG is a publisher of technology industry magazines targeting audiences from the B2B market to the Consumer Technology segment.
Colin shared some numbers that are quite telling of where segments of the magazine print industry are shifting:
In the US, our online revenue now accounts for over 35% of our total US publishing revenues. Next year, for many brands online revenues will be greater than print revenues, if fact they already are at some of our key brands and by 2009 – approximately 50% of IDG’s US revenues will come from online.
With its shift away from print publishing, IDG has also retooled it’s business mission:
Going forward IDG Communications will define itself as a web centric information company complemented by expos, events and print publications.
Colin also points out that new competitors exist, which weren’t part of the print-only world:
In the past media organizations controlled content and pushed it out to subscribers, today’s media has to deal with a world of social connections, networking and collective actions enabled by the Internet.
And he also has the wisdom to see his audience is changing along with their demands for how they want their content delivered and their need to participate:
We have to become facilitators as much as content creators – our brands are trusted, they have quality content and loyal audiences – these are our competitive advantages but we’ll only hold onto those assets if we truly listen to our communities and provide appropriate environments for user initiated conversations and user created content.
IDG’s new strategy should be a signal to all print publishers (no matter the reader audience) that the shift is happening. It may not be clear what the path forward should be or what business models will work best with each publisher or publishing segment, but now is the time to start preparing for the shift by ensuring content is “repurposed” for the digital world and exploring new methods and platforms for content delivery.
Buried behind my Windows XP machine is an old PIII/500 running the now unsupported Windows 98SE. I’m not sure why I still have this computer, though it’s probably easier to keep than dispose of, since it’s connected to the monitor, keyboard, and mouse of the XP machine through a KVM switch. One never knows when they might come across a piece of software that requires booting up the legacy machine and operating system. Yeah, right…
I won’t go into details of why, but the other day I needed to retrieve some files from the Win98 machine. I figured the quickest way would be to attach a USB thumb drive (also known as a USB flash drive) to the computer, copy the files over, and then connect the thumb drive to the XP machine. I was in for a surprise because when I connected the thumb drive to the Win98 machine, the computer didn’t recognize the drive. Okay, I thought. I’ll just visit the thumb drive manufacturer’s site, download the Win98 drivers, install them, and connect the drive.
Well, after seven installs of the manufacturer’s driver and Windows 98 being unable to find the driver to install, I then realized why all the Windows 98 books I published sold so well. Unfortunately, because I was involved with so many books over the years, I had at some point in the past purged all my Windows 98 books, so I couldn’t reference any for an answer. Of course, in reality, very rarely do I reference any of my books for quick information, when I can usually find the information on google. Anyway, I typed in the Google search box “flash drive generic driver” and the second search result had my answer at Technical-Assistance.co.uk, a Windows 98 SE Generic USB Mass Storage Device Drivers installer. I downloaded the file, installed the drivers, and and was able to mount the thumb drive under Windows 98 without any further problems.
So why am I sharing this story with you? Well, this experience reminded of a conversation I had with Dave Taylor at Gnomedex in Tahoe a few years back. Dave presented the idea of posting the content from out of print and obsolete books online, so people could have access to the information. The publisher/author could monetize the content through advertising, upselling and maybe even affiliate relationships. Soon after the conference, Dave called me at the office with the idea that a huge portion of the population was still using Windows 98 in one form or another, most books on Windows 98 were either out of print or hard to find, so why not post all the content from our Windows 98 books online for people to access for answers? Wow, what a cool idea.
Well, unfortunately due to some legal and contractual issues, I couldn’t use the content from the Windows 98 books to create the Windows 98 online super resource that Dave had sold me on, but the point is many publishers and authors out there are sitting on what they consider to be obsolete material, when in reality the content is only obsolete while on paper and being sold through traditional retails channels. It may still have an audience and value to you as publisher or author, if you explore what the internet has to offer for distribution.
This month’s SF Tech Sessions features three startups that are building communities on the mobile platform. The companies are:
1. WAPtags is a mobile search and bookmarking site that is building an ad-hoc community around search results. Users can leave comments on sites, creating conversations and connections between visitors who found the site through WAPtags.
2. Twitter is built to let you take an online community - your friends, blog readers, or site visitors - and make a mobile community around them. Users can send SMS updates to Twitter which are saved online and can be posted to website or sent to friends’ phones.
3. TextMarks allows people to create instantaneous mobile communities based solely on text messages. Anyone can define a key word and choose an automated response when that keyword is sent to the system. But a community is created when users allow people to subscribe to the key word, then any subscriber to send messages to the group allowing anyone with a keyword, whether they know each other or not, to join in.
It strikes me that potential in mobile communities for retailers is huge and it’s worth watching this area as it continues to grow.
Here is an interesting use of customer/community feedback.
The Flyers, a minor league baseball team in Schaumburg, IL, allow the fans, voting online, to decide the team’s starting lineup each night. The fans determine the lineup, the pitcher, and who will play what position.
Now take this idea a few steps further and imagine what retailers and manufacturers could do if they had direct access to their customers during product development, allowing them to build the products with the features and options most desired.
A press release from Hitwise shows the trend that community sites such as MySpace are increasingly driving more traffic to shopping sites and retailers. The report details MySpace.com’s phenomenal growth over the past six months increasing 67% to a 4.88% market share of all U.S. visits to websites.
But what was even more striking about the report was MySpace.com’s impact on upstream visits to shopping sites:
Social networking site MySpace.com accounted for 2.53 percent of all U.S. upstream visits to Shopping and Classifieds category for the week ending August 26, 2006, up from 1.28 percent six months ago (week ending February 25, 2006).
Compare Myspace.com’s upstream visits (2.53%) to the big three search engines, Google (14.93%), Yahoo! Search (4.69%), and MSN Search (2.33%) and it’s obvious that online communities have the potential to be just as important to retailers as search technologies in driving traffic.
Here’s another example of retailers using their customers/community to power their sales:
It’s all about a community and what experiences its members have to share with each other. Bazaarvoice is taking advantage of this philosophy by launching yet another another service, SyndicateVoice™, which will share customer ratings and reviews across many of the shopping portals and comparison sites, where most people start their shopping experiences.
SyndicateVoice is seamlessly integrated with Bazaarvoice’s ratings and reviews platform to allow retailers to maximize marketing impact and conversion rates. Bazaarvoice provides the industry’s most advanced analytics to allow companies to pinpoint product trends, community sentiment, and key influencers based on review activity. The Bazaarvoice solution is totally customizable and integrates with leading eCommerce tools including web analytics, site search, and email marketing services.
Bazaarvoice manages a customer ratings and review service which allows businesses to enable and analyze customer ratings and reviews on their website.
Curious as to how some of the open source CMS (Content Management System) software products will fit your needs? OpenSourceCMS has a huge list of open source CMS systems (blogs, forums, e-commerce, portals, etc.) that you can test drive.
“The administrator username and password is given for every system and each system is deleted and re-installed every two hours. This allows you to to add and delete content, change the way things look, basically be the admin of any system here without fear of breaking anything.”
It’s great idea which lets you explore whether a system has the functionality or ease-of-use that you want. The best part is even though it’s a test drive, there’s no sales person trying to pressure you into a new CMS that day.
According to InternetRetailer.com, Overstock.com is replacing its internal customer ratings and review application with a third-party program from Bazaarvoice Inc.
Overstock stores about 350,000 customer reviews on its product pages, but the retailer needed a speedier and more efficient way to post reviews and analyze the results. The new technology will enable Overstock to more efficiently monitor its customer reviews and rankings using a hosted application. Customers now can review and see their comments posted on both products and specific product characteristics. The technology also helps Overstock produce and measure more precise customer ratings and optimize customer comments for search engine rankings.