Death. Life. And 6 Things To Do About It
Yesterday I sat on a panel at an American Business Media conference. The audience was mainly b-to-b magazine publishers looking for solutions as the web rips apart the fabric of their universe.
The stated purpose of the session was to help these guys understand the concept of social media. Here’s a definition that reasonable people can argue about:
Social media is the aggregate of the tools, systems and functionality that enable anyone to create content and push or pull it seamlessly around the web.
For traditional publishers this is a huge (and extremely unnerving) deal. Social media has enabled the absolute democratization of content. We used to live in a world where information was scarce and therefore expensive. Now, thanks to the web and the groundswell of consumer participation, it’s ubiquitous and mostly free.
Publishers used to be the gatekeeper of reliable information, eking out news, stories and opinion to an eager audience. They’ve lost that role. Subject-matter expertise (on any subject) is not confined to these self-appointed guardians of the public record. Now anyone can have a say and many, many do.
One of the most interesting aspects of the rise of the blogosphere is that although the MSM (mainstream media) continues to deride it as pajamas media, the most successful parts of it are made up of extremely knowledgeable and eloquent specialists – academics, ex-journalists, business leaders, lawyers, analysts and so on.
These (unpaid) contributors are experts in their fields – certainly as informed as many of the (paid) writers relied on by traditional publishers. The result of their participation is that the essence of the information flow has changed.
Where publishers used to tell a captive audience what was going on, now a community informs itself. What used to be a (paid) lecture has become a (free) conversation. That’s social media. What the hell can publishers do about it?
The first thing (and most have already, painfully, figured this out) is to forget about trying to control content on the web. They need to take an open-source approach to its distribution. No firewalls, no walled gardens, no subscriptions.
Writers must be empowered and mandated to engage in the conversation. Content is only as good as the last person who linked to it. Make it linkable. Writers should be remunerated based on content popularity as determined by the community (based on ratings, links, related blog posts etc). There’s no choice but to embrace this.
This is how publishers can play a leadership role in the conversation. Demonstrating through the quality and focus of their content (and their acceptance of the new world order) that they deserve a seat at the table (and their erstwhile subscribers’ RSS feeds).
But the problems for publishers run deeper than this. Unlike a company selling widgets that needs to leverage web content to better persuade consumers to buy their products, publishing companies are (were) in the business of monetizing content itself. If content is self-evidentially free, how is that possible?
Unfortunately for the owners, investors and employees of traditional publishers, there’s no one good answer to this. And time’s running out. Print circulations and subscriptions decline. Ad dollars disappear (and don’t reappear at their online properties).
Whatever the answer is (or answers are), publishers sure need to pull their heads out of the sand. Social media isn’t about new ways for them to make a little money. It’s about survival. If I had to bet I’d say that in 5 years 50% of traditional media as we know it will be out of business and the other 50% wouldn’t recognize itself in the mirror.
Ironically those b2b publishers I talked to this week may well be in a better position to figure it out than mega brands like the New York Times or Time magazine. The b2b guys have one key ingredient that the web demands. Niche focus.
They need to double down and double down again on the relevance, quality and value of the content they serve up to their niche communities. Then they need to identify any other informational needs their community requires that might not be readily available to any one with a modem and a point of view.
This is the ESPN approach, and the strategy Murdoch is taking with his purchase of the WSJ. It fuels the Bloomberg Empire. The only information or content you can monetize is the stuff you exclusively control that others absolutely have to have.
But that’s probably not enough. So in the time honored fashion, here are six things publishers need to do right now
1) Executive management needs to understand and appreciate the new reality and concentrate on the challenges at hand. Navigating these rapids (Niagara Falls?) will require leadership and a firm hand
2) Don’t delegate web strategy to a 20-something ‘hired gun’. It needs to be driven from the C-Suite and supported by the best digital thought-leadership available
3) Maintain an absolute focus on creating and sharing compelling, relevant, niche content that consistently ranks as the most valued in the community
4) Start thinking about everything from the point of view of the customer and the community. What information do they need (or couldn’t do without if it was available) that cannot easily be aggregated and served by anybody else. Monetize it. Rinse, repeat
5) Aggressively utilize legacy revenues from subscriptions and advertising to bank-roll experimentation and innovation
6) Focus the entire rationale of the business on identifying and leveraging new forms of revenue that make sense for tomorrow not the good old days
Not everyone’s going to come out of this alive. But those that do will likely define the role of professional content and publishing for the 21st century.
Tags: innovation, publishing, Social Media
