Shiblog | B2B Internet Marketing and Media Insight

I was watching Costas NOW (video here) the other night and watched as an Buzz Bissinger slammed blogs and bloggers in a ridiculous generalization.

"I think blogs are dedicated to cruelty, they’re dedicated to dishonesty, they’re dedicated to speed."

I'm amazed at how much journalists feel threatened by bloggers and how personal they make the argument. They throw the rules of journalism out the window when defending journalism itself. The latest example comes from Wired's Betsy Schiffman. In a blog post attacking the integrity of a competitor, the blog TechCrunch, she files it under the tag "buttmunch" as an obvious personal swipe at blogger Michael Arrington.

With escalating printing, postage, paper costs, publishers are grappling with how to take magazines to the Web as online-only franchises. Having recently relaunched a shuttered magazine as a Web-based business, I thought I'd share my thoughts and experiences on the subject.

Ads viewable entirely above the fold are seen 60% of the time while those below the fold are only seen 25% of the time, according to a recent Eyetools/Marketing Sherpa study. Armed with this data, Steve Rubel estimates that a billion online advertising dollars are wasted.

I had the opportunity to lead a presentation on B2B social / professional networking. As you might be aware, Penton has won numerous awards for Reel Exchange. I took this opportunity to take folks behind the scenes and let them know how we came to build and launch this community.

What many people don't know is that Reel Exchange wasn't originally supposed to be a social / professional network. I describe the evolution of the product as well as many of the challenges that we encountered in the presentation.

Download the presentation.

Media Business published this article quoting me as saying, "WSJ.com's likely elimination of paid subscriptions 'a completely horrible strategy.'" Yes, I did say it, and I stand by it.

I'm not the only one poking holes in this strategy, however. Joseph Weisenthal of PaidContent.org wrote a great piece on how Dow Jones would need to increase traffic 12x in order to offset subscription revenues. Joseph is covering the analysis of Bear Sterns analyst Spencer Wang, and I'm in Spencer's court.

The day that AOL announced its strategy to open its content (August '06), I began discussing with my team plans to begin gating our content in such a way that it would not diminish but enhance our advertising revenues. AOL has opened up its content at the top of an advertising boom and gated at the bottom of the bust. These moves were made too late in the cycle, and they left the company in poor position as the advertising climate shifted. I believe that it's important to view the long-term benefits in addition to the short-term gains.

What do you think? Should publishers focus on a subscription model, ad-supported model, or a hybrid?

FOLIO has dramatically changed its Web business with the relaunch of its site. Gone is the NASCAR approach to online advertising with everyone getting a button on the homepage of the magazine companion site. In place of that approach is an engaging, Web 2.0-friendly site that acts as a resource to the publishing community. Offerings such as video, webinars, a career center, blogs, and an event calendar move the site beyond companion site status (acting as a repository for magazine content with a smattering of news written for the Web) and establish FOLIOmag.com as an online destination in and of itself.

FOLIO and Drupal

FOLIO is using a CMS called Drupal to run this new site. Drupal an open source project, meaning that the product is available for free and can be customized by your team. I haven't spoken to Tony or Dave yet about why they selected Drupal, but I think they've made a wise choice. Drupal is robust (thousands of modules which expand the core products functionality), scalable, community driven, and easy to set up and customize.

Drupal was a driving factor behind Howard Dean's early success in his presidential campaign. His DeanSpace Web site and CRM system were innovative steps during that time, enabling a grass roots donation campaign to take place. These marketing efforts behind that campaign are similar to circulation verification efforts, and I think that Drupal's sister product, CivicSpace, could be a great platform for a small publisher looking for an integrated database and email system.

Penton and Drupal

This is the first time that I've revealed this publicly, but Penton is currently developing a next-gen Web site solution for our portfolio of magazines based on Drupal. I can personally say that I'm pleased with the progress so far, and I'm excited about the potential of the project. I'm considering open sourcing part or all of that effort to enable other publishers to benefit from our work and enable the B2B media community to collaborate on improving our sites. It's not a done deal by any means, but if there are some publishers out there willing to collaborate on technology, we would be willing to look at making the source code available.

What do you think of these statements made by Mark Simon, VP Industry Relations for DidIt, and published by MediaPost's Search Insider?

• "Trade magazines. You’ll rarely get a point of view in a trade magazine that’s not biased by some hidden agenda. Why? Trade magazines are generally run on a shoestring and few can afford to pay columnists with a truly independent point of view. So most of the content is written by — guess who? Vendors pushing their own products."
• "Trade shows. Trade shows work much like trade magazines. 'Informational' seminars are vendor-driven, 'solutions-providing' spokespeople are self-serving, and things only get worse once you get to the trade show floor, because the junior marketing people at the booths rarely have a clue about what their companies do. Things are so bad that the boosters of a certain online ad trade show have been reduced to making a desperate pitch, which goes something like this: 'the real action at the Big Search Show isn’t at the conferences (which usually just rerun the stuff that the vendors were saying last year), or on the trade show floor (where there is no meaningful information at all), but in the after-hours networking.' "

Please feel free to leave your comments below. I left a comment on MediaPost, and I've pasted it here as well. (Click "Read more" to see it.)

In the midst of talk of WSJ.com, FT.com, and NY Times Select going free and openning their sites up, hats off to FOLIO, Tony Silber and Bill Mickey for doing a piece on paid content! I give FOLIO tons of credit for highlighting a company that is going against the popular trend.

Personally, I think that the timing of this article couldn't be better. With the ad climate looking stormy, it's time to begin looking for new revenue streams instead of chasing today's hottest action (online advertising). While I believe in going after every online advertising dollar available, it's time to start diversifying.

On a side note, I read the article in print first. Yes, Tony, I do read print... and I do read your publisher's letters. ;-) I really enjoyed FOLIO's redesigned magazine. The team deserves kudos for the solid work on that front as well. If you haven't picked up this month's issue, check it out.

I read this issue of Fast Company on the plane home today (yes, the print version), and I realized how much of an influence a conversation that Jennie Lee, our Creative Director, and I had prior to her coming on board last year had on me personally as well as Penton. If you don't have time to pick up a copy, you can find the stories here.

I was thrilled to see one of our "OADM's" (Online Audience Development Managers) getting some press. Beth has really made a name for herself within our group, working on a ridiculous amount of redesigns, improving site traffic, and impressing her teammates on a regular basis. Congrats, Beth!