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April 1, 2008 Leave a Comment

Business Blogging 101

I found an interesting article on the Business Week website: “Social Media Will Change Your Business.” (click here to read the complete article)

This is why I found it interesting:

  1. The article was originally printed (yes, old media) in the May, 2005 version of Business Week Magazine.
  2. It was also published on-line. The editors say that they continue to see this article downloaded by thousands of visitors.
  3. The article is now fully “annotated” with updates, corrections and extensions to the original article.
  4. For me, this reveals the true promise of electronic publishing. No longer can we say, “It is set in type.” Dead media comes alive!

For anyone interested in a quick, informative introduction to the world of “Social Media” – and how it may impact your business, your products and your customers – this is your starting point.

If you enjoy the article, share it with your friends. And… tell our readers what you think. Add your comments below.

Link to this post!
Filed Under: Business Communications, Communications, Main Page, Marketing Tagged: , , , , , ,
March 30, 2008 Leave a Comment

The Magic of Hyper-Links

For some reason I missed this story when it was originally published in The Wall Street Journal:

“Borders Tries About-Face on Shelves” – by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg

I am always on the look-out for stories on In-store merchandising, book publishing and bookstores. But I missed this one.

However, I stumbled across it via a series of hyper-links:

  1. A post on Seth Godin’s Blog – “Do you have” vs. “Do you want” which referenced…
  2. A post on the Brand Autopsy Blog – “Borders Reducing Its Borders” which was commentary on the original WSJ story about Borders Bookstores’ decision to:
    1. Place more of their books “face-out” on their shelves vs. the traditional “spine-out” style (common in libraries)
    2. This means cutting back on the number of individual titles stocked in each store by @ 10% (9,350 titles)
    3. Because when this new merchandising strategy was tested in a prototype Borders Bookstores, sales of the individual titles placed “face-out” increased by 9%

For anyone who has a life outside of book publishing, book selling and libraries this may seem like a “no-brain-er.”

“Some think the move is overdue. Unlike modern supermarkets, booksellers haven’t done enough to make books look attractive on the shelves, says John Deighton, editor of the Journal of Consumer Research.

“Breakfast cereals are not stocked end-of-box out,” he says. “You want to your product to be as enticing as possible. It’s a little bizarre that it’s taken booksellers this long to realize that the point of self-service is to make the product as tempting as possible.”

“To be as enticing as possible…” As in to pick up the book, look inside and decide to purchase it! Continue reading “The Magic of Hyper-Links” »

Filed Under: Business Communications, Business Practices, Customer Service, Merchandising, Sales Tagged: , , , , , , ,
March 27, 2008 Leave a Comment

The Medium is The Message

“If the news is that important, it will find me.”

– A college student responding to a focus group question

The times, they are a changin’. No doubt about it. The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, etc.  They have had to change, albeit reluctantly.

There has been a shift in power:

The mainstream media no longer control how their content is delivered – it can be forwarded by a friend or colleague. There are multiple channels where it can be accessed – original content frequently appears as a “link” on a competitors website. And, of course, the mainstream media no longer control when their content can be read or seen or heard.

I no longer wait for the “thump” of the Sunday edition of the New York Times to hit my doorstep. That used to be my signal to wake up, make the coffee and relax for a few hours absorbing the news and views of the newspaper of record.

I ended my subscription to the paper almost two years ago. I do not miss the full page ads from Macy’s and Bloomingdale. But I am sure that those department stores miss me. Or at least my subliminal attention. And I am sure that the New York Times misses both the revenue they got from my subscription and the advertising revenue from Macy’s and Bloomingdale. I will admit, however,  to missing the two hours of sitting in my easy chair on Sunday morning!

The times they are a changin’.

Take this morning. I found this headline intriguing:

Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On – by Brian Stelter

So I clicked on it to read it. However, it is original content from the NY Times but I found it on the MSNBC.com website. This is now a common occurrence. I call it “Drudging the content.” This is a reference to the popular news website, The Drudge Report which does no actual reporting. It simply – and effectively – populates its only web page with “links” to original content found on other websites.

Does it really matter where I get the article from? Not to me.

I do hope that MSNBC and The NY Times have some sort of reciprocal revenue arrangement worked out. But that is not of my concern. To quote the unnamed college student, “If the news is that important it will find me.”

I titled this post, “The Medium is The Message”  as a tribute to Marshall McLuhen, a Canadian educator who coined the phrase in 1964. Here is a short definition of the phrase, courtesy of Wikipedia:

“The medium is the message” is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhanmeaning that the form of a medium imbeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived, creating subtle change over time. The phrase was introduced in his most widely known book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964.[1] McLuhan proposes that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of study; he said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself.

I first remember hearing this phrase when I was 17 in 1967. I was standing in line waiting to see the movie, “The Graduate” and was discussing this concept with my friends. I continue to retain a vivid image of that evening in my mind – 41 years later! Both McLuhan’s concept and the movie have had a profound impact on my thinking.

Just as YouTube, Facebook and the other Social Networks are having a profound impact on our current culture. Continue reading “The Medium is The Message” »

Filed Under: Business Communications, Communications, Main Page, Political Strategy Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
March 26, 2008 Leave a Comment

Getting the Competitive Edge in News Reporting

Gathering and reporting the news has always been a highly competitive business. It is cut-throat. The race to get “the scoop” or to “break the story” is how reputations are made.

Daily newspapers, weekly news magazines, the 6:00 PM network news, 24/7 cable news, the Internet. The medium changed. However, the way that news was gathered and reported did not change so much.

Until recently.

To properly report a story you had to be there. On-the-ground. Live and in-person. You needed access to your subjects (and their handlers) in order to obtain exclusive interviews. You needed to be present in order to report “leaks” from anonymous sources. The reason that reporters needed to be on the scene was to report the “back story” – the story behind the story.

But now there is a new story. And this time it is about the process of gathering and reporting the news:

“The Buzz on the Bus: Pinched, Press Steps Off” – This is the story in today’s New York Times.

Except… It was also the lead political story on the MSNBC website. And it had a prominent placement on The Drudge Report. And The Huffington Post and at least a half a dozen other Internet “news” sites.

Here is a brief excerpt from the NY Times piece written by Jacques Steinberg:

“Traveling campaign reporters say they try to do more than just regurgitate raw information or spoon-fed news of the day, which anyone who watches speeches on YouTube can do. The best of them track the evolution and growth (or lack thereof) of candidates; spot pandering and inconsistencies or dishonesty; and get a measure of the candidate that could be useful should he or she become president.

Deep and thoughtful reporting is also being produced by journalists off the trail. And some news organizations that can afford it are doing both. But the absence of some newspapers on the trail suggests not only that readers are being exposed to fewer perspectives drawn from shoe-leather reporting, but also that fewer reporters will arrive at the White House in January with the experience that editors have typically required to cover a president on Day 1.”

(Click here to view a slide show accompanying the NY Times article.)

So, today, many news reporters do not have to put up with inconvenient travel schedules, stripping down in order to pass through airport screening machines, fast-food diets, suspicious hotel accommodations and a noticeable lack of sleep. Their editors don’t even need to go to the expense of installing expensive connections to The Associated Press (AP) or Reuters. They just need a 24/7 broadband connection to The Drudge Report.

The Drudge Report is one of the most widely viewed Internet sites. Almost every political reporter maintains a constant connection to his site. And Matt Drudge does not even report! He collects the news stories that others report and he creates “headline links” to the original sources. The only editing that he does is to select the stories to place on his one-page website and to determine their placement or prominence.

And now, it appears, that many mainline media are “doing the Drudge.” They are populating their pages via “links” to the original reporting that others perform. They need news content that is constantly updated. However, the costs of actually going out into the field to gather reports are rapidly escalating at the same time that their subscription base and advertising revenue are in a precipitous free-fall.

So what can the media do? Create “links” to other media sites? This is not a blatant case of “passing off as their own” the original content that others create. After all, the original sources are always credited – and I hope compensated!

“The Medium is the message.”

Marshall McLuhan coined that phrase in 1964. That was at a time when the visual media, especially television was rapidly replacing newspapers, books and radio as the preferred medium for news and entertainment.

Perhaps now, 44 years later it is time to reapply this phrase to our analysis of news reporting – especially in the arena of politics. Continue reading “Getting the Competitive Edge in News Reporting” »

Filed Under: Business Communications, Business Practices, Political Strategy Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,