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Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
Reed Magazine Closure is Shocking
Monday, April 19th, 2010The news this past week that Reed Publishing walked away from more than 20 of its premier magazine titles, unable to sell them, is shocking news, even though we’ve all known for some time the magazines were up for sale. Reed closed a variety of magazines that were dominant in their markets, even some #1s. What does this mean for the value of print? Yet another signal print magazines are dead? Here are some thoughts:
- I don’t believe they’re dead, but the Reed magazines that survived were the ones that made more revenue in their online businesses than from print. It signals definitely that “readers” can still be drawn to do magazine communities, but they spend more time with them on the magazine websites than in the print magazine.
- I think that balancing print in with a wide variety of tactics that encircle our sweet spot is the right course of action. The closure of magazines this past year has made the survivors thicker, more likely to remain viable long term. So it will be easier to pick which ones we should support.
- The role of editor quality is becoming more evident. In a world filled by blogs, casual thinkers and less-than-insightful writers, there’s a lot of junk to wade through. Engineers are still busy people, and time is still a premium. The publications and websites that do the best job of sifting through information to present exactly what readers need to know, with the most insight, accuracy and crispness, will be the ones that continue to draw an audience.
- As one of my publishing friends said (nod to you, Bill Barron of Hearst), print has to be viewed in a balance, like anything else. It’s not a “print OR online” choice, it’s a “print AND online” world. No more than 10-15% of a budget should be spent on print, and only in those publications where there’s PROVEN readership of the print magazine. That’s the bottom line – readership. If people read an email newsletter, we run in it. If people read a print magazine, we should be visible there as well. We should go where customers spend time. End of story.
Online Marketing – Making it Work, and Making it Legal
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009You don’t need a survey to tell you that marketing dollars are shifting from traditional media to online. Whether it’s Google advertising, company web sites, blogs or email, marketing budgets increasingly are tilting to reach their customers with online tools. In some cases, companies are moving to 100% of spending via online marketing, leaving traditional advertising and direct mail programs behind.
In the age of LinkedIn and Twitter, what’s working and why? Is email still effective? If research shows that company web sites generate the highest quality sales leads, what are the latest tactics for boosting web traffic?
Yet understanding online strategy is only half the task at hand. Fast-changing practices are challenging legal assumptions for what’s permissible in your online promotion programs. Can I buy keywords on Google that use my competitors’ names? Do I need terms and conditions posted on my site? If my salespeople build a customer contact file in LinkedIn, who “owns” those contact links if they leave the company? How should I change my employee handbook to account for company bloggers?
Presenters: Joel Goldstein, Goldstein Group Communications, Inc.
Lou Licata, Licata & Toerek
Thursday, October 8, 2009
8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.
8:00 a.m. – 8:30 a.m. Registration, Networking, Continental Breakfast
8:30 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. Program
Corporate Plaza I
6450 Rockside Woods Blvd. South, Lower Level
Cost: No Charge
Register by Phone: (216) 573-6000 or Email: Wendy Kertesz – wsk@completecounsel.com
New Tools Improve Your Online World
Thursday, May 28th, 2009There’s no shortage of cool tools coming out for business owners. I heard about many at a conference a few weeks ago in New Orleans, and some of the hottest included:
- Google Voice (formerly grandcentral.com), a one-number voice mail/email service; grasshopper.com is similar.
- Heard of live chat? That’s soooo early 2000s! Try video chat inside gmail (Google) email accounts, where you can see friends while chatting.
- Run a timesheet-oriented business? Try www.slimtimer.com, an online tool to simplify timesheets.
- Worried about losing your company’s institutional knowledge, or scrambling to find the same documents again and again? Store it all on a free password-protected wiki, at Googlesites, without needing to code in html.
- Looking to create a group of like-minded people to share coffee, war stories, best practices, etc.? One may already exist, or create one on your own at www.meetup.com.
- Create your own live video streaming show, for free of course, at www.ustream.com. (Distribute it – for free – on www.tubemogul.com.)
- Go beyond old RSS feeds to www.feedburner.com (of course, now also owned by Google) to build your own audiences and push your content to more people.
Does anyone charge for software anymore? Enjoy.
Getting Noticed Doesn't Necessarily Mean Getting Published Anymore
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009Many business-to-business trade magazines are melting away in this environment. Yet two client experiences we’ve had here at the agency led us to wonder, “Maybe it’s more important to be ‘published’ on Google than in a magazine anyway.” Here’s what happened: we placed an article for a client in its industry’s leading trade journal, only to have the sales rep call to say the article won’t run unless the client buys an ad. “Sorry, but we’re in survival mode here, and now you have to pay to play.” That’s not a good sign for the long-term prospects of that magazine. The next day, we heard from another client that the turnout for their recent webcast far exceeded anything they’d done before, and they traced it back to a simple news release we distributed on the wire (with key phrases optimized for search engines, of course). While they usually have 200-400 attending a webcast, depending on the topic, this one drew 1200 registrants. Anyone doing a routine Google search for the topic, they discovered, ran across the webcast release, and many registered. So, the event was successful, even though the release didn’t run in any of the industry’s print publications. We’re seeing that more often, the moment a release hits the wire, people discover it and it receives vast, immediate exposure, particularly when the release uses the wire services’ optimization tools.
Protect Your Brand Name
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009It’s a global world, but is your company’s name reaching global online markets with the same impact as here in the United States? The first step toward world domination for your brand is to extend it by buying your domain name for the other countries to which you sell. Example: www.acme.de (Germany), www.acme.fr (France), www.acme.jp (Japan), etc.
Yahoo on Yahoo!
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009Congratulations to our own Cyndi Friedel, who handles the agency’s search engine Pay-Per-Click programs, for recently earning her certification as a Yahoo! Search Ambassador. Cyndi had earned her certification from Google some time ago and recently added the Yahoo! credentials to her resume of skills.
Working through the SEO Process – Understanding how everything works together
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009We’ve recently posted a new page to the brandcepts web site that details how your website content, architecture, social media sites, and web analytics all work together to improve your search engine rankings. While many SEO sites detail how each piece is important in their own special way, we haven’t seen it explained how collectively they fit together to help businesses improve their search engine rankings. What many people don’t understand is that SEO is a process and not a one time effort. To maintain high search engine rankings, you need to continue to work on content and drive quality traffic to your website. And while one piece of the puzzle may seem important, it’s not a complete picture without the other pieces and the end results are less than picture perfect. Feel free to check out the page and contact us if you would like more information.
Pitch the Web When You're Pitching TV
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009Next time you’re pitching a story for TV, think “web.” That’s the advice from Howard Fencl, a news producer at Cleveland TV station WKYC. News executives increasingly look for stories that not only have a visual play and make for a good story for the evening broadcast but for an angle that would play well on the station’s web site. Reporters finish their stories and then direct viewers to the site to learn more and get additional details not aired during the segment.
