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When I started in association publications—about the time of the last ice age, reckoned in Internet time—communication was simple: write it, print it, mail it. The dynamics of communication had not changed fundamentally from the time Moses brought the tablets down from Mt. Sinai. God speaks. Listen up.

Now, the era of author as God-on-high is over. Anyone with a blog, a podcast, or a Web page can issue a commandment, a commentary, a criticism. And, unlike God, today’s authors do not rest on Sunday.

The Web has made communications today fluid and fast-changing, nothing like the one-way transmission from author to reader I grew up with. I count seven broad trends in communications, the “7 Cs”:

1. Content creation by users. User-created content has come a long, long way from the humble letter to the editor. Users want not merely to respond to content they read; they want to co-create it. And, these days, they can, whether by contributing to essays in the Wikipedia, sharing the bookmarks on del.icio.us, or confessing their most private thoughts and actions on Facebook.

2. Connectedness. Communications prophet Bill Gates phrased the desire for communications connectedness best. Speaking in January at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show, he said, “Our ambition is to give you connected experiences 24 hours a day. We admit that when you're sleeping we haven't quite figured out what we're going to do for you there, but the rest of the time, the minute you get in the kitchen and look at that refrigerator, pick up your phone, hear the alarm clock tell you about the traffic; whatever it is, we want you to have the information that you're interested in.”

3. Continuous updating. Time was, updating meant the afternoon edition of the local paper. Today, many users are frustrated if a Google News update is more than an hour old. They demand up-to-the minute coverage, for example, of who will get custody of Anna Nicole Smith's baby daughter.

4. Customization. Ever since the John Deere company launched the first custom publication, The Furrow, in the 1890s, publishers have been striving to tailor information for the individual reader. Today, even simple sites offer some measure of user customization. For that matter, customization is not unique to publishing. It is possible to customize your Roomba vacuum cleaner, for example, with skins that make it look like a pizza or a flower.

5. Criticism. The legion of bloggers who brought down Dan Rather and help to doom John Kerry's campaign are just as much on the prowl for association publications. The American Diabetes Association, for example, despite being the leading association fighting diabetes, comes under attack for its stance on dietary sugar, for its support for animal research, and for taking money from the pharmaceutical industry.

6. Cross-media delivery. Even seemingly stodgy old-line publishers like Time, Inc. have caught the cross-media bug. The company has gone so far as to name a "Chief Research and Insights Officer," Betsy Frank, in charge of "driving strategic insights across all of the company’s brands and businesses on multiple platforms."

7. Competition. Competition is everywhere. Where many associations once had their markets to themselves, today competing publications and Web sites come from for-profit media companies, vendors, other associations, bloggers, wikis, the government, and many other sources.

At first glance associations might seem poorly equipped to tackle, let alone profit from, the seven C's of new media. In my next post, however, I'll argue that associations, as communities, have a natural advantage in exploiting today's trends in media toward community, consensus, and collaboration.

This posting is based on presentation given on February 2, 2007, to the Pittsburgh Society of Association Executives and co-sponsored by the Society of National Association Publiations.

Labels: web publishing community

In the world of scholarly publishing, a growing chorus argues that print is for stripped-down versions of articles, supplemented by longer bells-and-whistles versions online, where space and cost are not constraints.

For example, Stevan Harnad, a British professor whose professional life is dedicated to a quixotic quest to have authors deposit copies of their manuscripts in openly accessible online repositories, argues "for authors to self-archive not only the shortened published version, but, prominently hyperlinked, the original full version too (and any revisions, corrections and updates)."

To an extent, the argument makes sense. Many articles, not only in scholarly publishing, could be enhanced by supplementary reference material, and the Web may be the perfect place to store it economically.

Still, I give pause at the prospect of print version articles supplemented by one or more lengthy "director's cut" versions in repositories. A strict word limit, like the prospect of hanging, tends to concentrate the mind wonderfully. Though the deposited version might contain useful supplementary data, it might also be simply represent the self-indulgence of a gassy author.

After all, Watson and Crick's 1953 paper in the journal Nature showing the double helix structure of DNA runs barely more than a page. A paper that modestly suggested "a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material” needed no supplementary detritus to change the world's understanding of genetics.

Perhaps what enabled Watson and Crick to think and to write with such clarity and vigor was the need to be concise. As William Strunk said, "A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts."

We should guard against cluttering the Web with unnecessary parts simply because it is easy to do so.

Search engine optimization has become has become a necessary component of marketing Web sites and online publications. With Google being the major way many readers find information, it's important that articles appear at the top of search results, even if that means paying for a sponsored link to get them there.

But now optimizing placement on Google may have moved from marketing to editorial itself. Whereas journalists were once trained to give the reader five Ws in the lead, now they may find pressure to deliver news morsels that Google will find tasty.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, the Times of London “is training journalists to write in a way that makes their articles more likely to appear among Google’s unpaid search results.” Zach Leonard, the paper's digital-media publisher, is quoted as saying, "You make sure key phrases and topic words are embedded in the top paragraph and headlines."

The strategy makes business sense. Newspaper readership is falling worldwide, and Google can be the tool for making content visible to untapped new markets--like U.S. readers for British newspapers. The Wall Street Journal articles quotes Edward Roussel, digital editor of The Telegraph, as saying, ”The most important driver of all readers [to our site] is Google, except for people who know us and come directly. It plays a critical part of exporting our brand, particularly to the U.S.”

It is not only newspaper reporters who are learning to talk to Google. Blogger John Gruber, who hosts Daring Fireball, a blog dedicated to "Mac + Web Nerdery, Etc.,"described adding a Google-grabbing ending to a post about fixing a common glitch in the energy saver setting of Mac's OS X operating system. This was the ending: "Yes, yes — I’ll file a proper report with Apple about this. But first things first — blog it so it gets into Google, the world’s best troubleshooting database."

Today, more than two years after Gruber's post, it remains the top hit to Google queries about problems with loading the OS X energy saver.

Gruber summed up his strategy for writing for Google with these tips:

"Don’t get cute with the title. Google seems to place an awful lot of emphasis on what you put in the title tag in your HTML headers. Ideally, the title should contain the words you think people will use in their queries.

"Stick to the facts in the first few paragraphs in the article. I’m somewhat sure that Google doesn’t index entire documents, just the first X words or paragraphs. And even if they do index entire documents, it seems to me they place more importance on the first first paragraphs. The specifics of Google’s indexer aren’t worth worrying about; the point is, get to the point quickly."

"If there are any likely search terms that you couldn't squeeze into the title, try to use them in the opening few paragraphs."

In the end, the advice isn't much different from getting the five Ws up high in your story. Maybe talking to the machine and talking to the man aren't so different after all.

Labels: Google writing newspapers search engine

Conventional wisdom says that associations should keep a padlock on their benefits and services, reserving them for paying members, and giving nonmembers at most a taste of what the association has to offer.

It is membership according to the Costco model: no membership, no entry, no access to the goods.

Nowhere is the members-only standard more common than with association publications, which are frequently the most tangible benefits of membership, and the most valued. Typically associations resist offering controlled circulation or low-cost nonmember subscriptions for fear of weakening the value of membership.

However, the reality is that the membership value proposition is already severely weakened. In many fields, it is no longer the case, as it was 10 or 20 years ago, that members have to join an association to gain professional education, specialized information, or networking opportunities. Avenues to gain information and engage in professional networking abound, whether through for-profit publications or Web sites or through Web-based communities. In fact, many of these alternative information and networking resources are more useful and usable than those from associations, as for-profits are often more agile, customer-focused, and technology-forward than their association counterparts.

In this situation, where specialized, high-quality information flows about as freely as air and water, associations have lost much of their intrinsic value, since information is their major product. Professionals are often promiscuous in where they get information services, and they don't automatically believe that an association is the best place to get information. Most are by default skeptics with no natural affinity to their association.

Frequently, an association strives to be a "true membership organization"--one that commands loyalty through deep and resonant connection with members who believe passionately in its purpose and goals. But true membership organizations are a dying breed. With information and networking and other services so widely available, the benefits and services of associations have been largely commoditized.

In this situation, it may be a losing battle to prop up the value of membership by trying to inhibit nonmembers from gaining access to association information in journals and magazines. That is like locking the prison doors after the prisoners have escaped; the information that was once solely the province of the association is out there, like it or not.

Thus, it may make sense to offer low-cost nonmember subscriptions or qualified controlled circulation. You may be able to reach a group of people who realistically in this non-joining era will never become members, while generating more advertising revenue and reaching many more people than you would by keeping information solely in the hands of members.

The way to preserve the value of membership (and entice your nonmember subscribers into joining) is not to hoard benefits and services, but simply to write a better value proposition for today. Value will be based not so much on the content you possess but on the context you deliver--a social environment that helps members sift through the deluge of professional information they receive and find the nuggets that help them improve their professional and personal lives and perform their jobs better now.

If trends in copyright law are beginning to baffle you, don't worry--be relieved. If you aren't confused, then you probably haven't thought about copyright deeply enough.

In publishing today, copyright is taking two wildly divergent paths. In literature and entertainment, copyright protections are growing stronger than ever, even when that means that corporate mediaopolies cling to information that some may argue reasonably belongs to the public. In scholarly literature, by contrast, publishers' copyrights are receiving increasing scorn from critics who see them as unholy relics of dying print media.

It's the battle between Mickey Mouse and laboratory mice.

The squabble has its roots in the U.S. Constition. Article 1, Section 8 states that, "The Congress shall have Power . . .To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Author and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

Here, as in so many things, the framers of the Constitution were wise. They recognized that to promote the public good, innovators needed exclusive rights, but that these should be "for limited times"--that is, just enough to provide reward for innovation, but not so much as to hinder its application for the general good.

Fast forward 200 years or so. The principle of copyright remains as sound as ever, but its application is less clear. For one thing, copyright holders are no longer humble "Author and Inventors" like, say, Ben Franklin toiling in his laboratory or print shop, but rather large media corporations. Does copyright today reward innovation, or does it serve to tighten the corporate stranglehold on intellectual property that rightfully belongs in the public domain?

Moreover, the Internet has made it at least technologically possible to give anyone, anywhere, anytime, access to all the world's knowledge. Is copyright inhibiting the spread of knowledge, progress in science, universal understanding--and perhaps world harmony and peace?

It may come as no surprise that different people take violently different answers to these questions. On one hand, The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998—sometimes dismissively called Mickey Mouse Protection Act for the extended protection it gave to certain Disney works—extended copyright terms in the United States by 20 years. Before the act copyright would last for the life of the author plus 50 years, or 75 years for a corporately authored work. The act extended the terms to life of the author plus 70 years and 95 years, respectively.

The act provoked--and continues to provoke--attacks on major entertainment companies and their copyright practices. For example, the group Downhill Battle has proclaimed its effort to "break the major label monopoly of the record industry and put control back in the hands of musicians and fans." The group engages in act of civil disobedience, like secretly affixing to CDs in WalMart and Target stickers that say, "Buying this CD funds lawsuits against children and families"--presumably kids who engage in music filesharing.

Despite the defiance of activists, there has been little movement in rolling back lengthy copyright protections for works of literature and entertainment. No so in scholarly publishing, where there is an aggressive effort to jettison copyright in the name of the public welfare.

Here, the argument is made that the Web has made it possible, for the first time in history, to instantly share the results of medical and scientific research. Making research freely available is so important a public goal that it should trump any copyright protections, this argument goes. "The US Constitution says that copyright exists 'to promote the progress of science'," wrote one so-called open access proponent, Richard Stallman, in the journal Nature. "When copyright impedes the progress of science, science must push copyright out of the way."

Not all critics of publishers' copyrights in science and medicine go so far. Yet there is a clear trend to gnaw away at publishers' copyrights in the name of public welfare. For example, the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006, introduced by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) requires federal agencies that fund over $100 million in annual external research to make electronic manuscripts of peer-reviewed journal articles stemming from their research publicly available via the Internet. That means that the federal government wants to require authors of papers copyrighted by scholarly journals to make early verisions of those papers freely available to the world, copyright be damned.

In other words, movies featuring Mickey Mouse, a character of considerable charm but no more public benefit than most rodents, gets extended copyright protection. By constrast, papers featuring laboratory mice, which scholarly publishers bring to publication to the benefit of science and medicine, get dwindling copyright protection.

If these protections appear backward, then you have begun to plunge into the muddy and conflicting currents in copyright.

Labels: publishing copyright scholarly

I am a publishing consultant. So it may seem odd to warn against the engaging the services of a someone like me.

In fact, I am not. There are many, many good reasons to bring in a consultant. A consultant can bring an outside perspective and allow a publication to see its operations in a fresh light. Consultants can address long-postponed problems that publications staff do not themselves have time to tackle. And consultants can help a publication confront a challenge--say, a long-term decline in advertising sales or readership--whose reversal may require a course correction too painful to contemplate on one's own.

But there are things consultants cannot do. Namely, tell you what you do not, at some level at least, already know. Force you to make decisions you cannot bring yourself to make. Close down or outsource publications you or your volunteers want to retain. Or, worse of all, force your staff to operate differently, when you have done nothing to prepare or sustain a different way of operating.

My fellow consultant John Cox has a saying that gets at the mistaken reliance on consultants: "A consultant is someone who asks to borrow your watch, then charges you when you ask the time." (He also shares a bit cruder version: "A consultant is someone who can tell you 50 ways to have sex, but doesn't know any women.")

If I had to list three reasons not to hire a consultant, these would be tops:

1. You can't make a decision. If you are expecting that the consultant will arrive with a report in the way Moses came down with the tablets from Mt. Sinai, your expectations are wildly unrealistic. A consultant can only offer you ten suggestions, not ten commandments. It's up to you whether and how to interpret and inplement them. If you can't make a decision, the consultant's report is very unlikely to point to a path so compelling that the decision to follow it is automatic.
   
2. You want to put key association volunteers in their place. If you're constantly butting heads with volunteers who want to edit the magazine, choose the cover photo, use the publication to cozy up to a sponsor, or dictate advertising and c policy, you have a problem deeper than a publications consultant can solve. You likely suffer from a more fundamental problem in volunteer relations and governance, and the proper roles of staff and volunteers need to be more clearly established before you can address problems with a publication. (However, a publications consultant can sometimes provide outside confirmation of the wisdom of a course that staff have suggested but association leaders have dismissed. Staff publications prophets too often go unrecognized in their own land.)
3. You want a consultant to give your publications program a vision and purpose. In healthy organizations, as described in the recent book 7 Measures of Success, products and services are aligned with the organization's mission. A publications consultant cannot reasonably determine how the publications program should support the association's mission and vision; that is a matter for some deep soul searching among staff and volunteers. There is no one answer. A publication might support the organization by generating revenue, by being an authoritative voice in the industry, or by aiding member recruitment and retention. A consultant can help you to discover the possibilities and to achieve them once a direction is decided--but the decision of where to go must begin in the association itself.

None of this is meant to discourge you from hiring a consultant--a step that, as a consultant, I often heartily endorse. But with associations' resources often limited, it is best to go into a consulting arrangement with expectations realistic and outcomes clearly defined.

One prospective client recently told me all he wanted was a "magic bullet" to turn his publications program around. Much as I wish it were so, consultants do not have a supply of magic in their holsters. What they do have is tools, techiques, and insights to support the hard but ultimately rewarding work of creating successful publications.

Labels: consultant publications

Sometime in the next few months, you may get RFPs from agencies asking for your advertising proposals and rates for 2007. If these RFPs follow the form of the past several years, there will be three messages:
• We will not pay more in 2007 than we did in 2006.
• While you hold prices constant, we expect more—free insertions, free merchandising, free coupons, more and more free things.
• We hate you.

If you dare to not hold your rates, you will likely receive a call from a 22-year-old media buyer who will shriek into the phone your need to meet agency demands, or never sell advertising in this town again.

Welcome to media buying 2007, which looks more and more like clearance days in Filene’s Basement. It’s enough to make a publisher wonder whether there is an easier way to generate revenue--like selling a kidney, maybe.

Unfortunately, too many publishers react to arm-twisting on rates by asking what may be the least relevant question of all: “Are other people raising their rates next year, and, if so, by how much?” Setting rates by building in the average rate increase of other publishers would be like deciding on your healthy weight by asking how much other people are gaining each year. If you weighed 300 pounds to begin with, adding the one pound everyone else was would still leave you on track to coronary disaster.

Rather than following the pack, the best approach to setting ad rates is an old and simple one, first written by the advertising consultants who inscribed their counsel on the ancient Temple at Delphi: “Know Thyself.” This breaks down into three strategies: know where you stand in relation to other titles in your particular field, know what special values you possess, and know how to leverage those values to maximum profit.

Knowing Where You Stand
Head to the SRDS Business Publication Advertising Source for data to begin your competitive analysis. Because publications in different industries may have characteristic prices ranges, define a competitive set of publications, including both association and for-profit titles. Calculate the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) by dividing the one-time four-color full-page rate by the paid (or, if a controlled publication, requested) circulation. This will give you a first ballpark estimate of how your rates compare to those of competitors.
It is only a ballpark, however, for several reasons. First, many publishers don’t stick to their published rate card, but use it as the starting place for discounting and dealing. Publications that appear expensive on the sheet may not be expensive on the street. Second, the quality of circulation statements can vary widely. Even in the wake of circulation scandals that turned the spotlight on dicey circulation claims, some sworn statements contain figures that appear questionable. Finally, CPM depends on the focus of the publication. A publication that reaches a targeted audience of influential decision makers can command a higher rate than a publication with a wider audience of non-managerial readers.
Though these factors make it hard to compare the CPM of your publication to those of competitors, they will at least give you a first clue about how media buyers will initially evaluate your rates, and what the range of rates is within your field.

Knowing Your Own Value
By itself, a CPM that is high for your industry doesn’t automatically mean your publication is overpriced, and a low CPM doesn’t necessarily mean you are underpriced. To know whether you are priced fairly, you have to know your publication’s value.
Enter research, from either a syndicated survey or a custom survey conducted by a respected independent research firm. To command higher rates, you will need to show that your readers are highly engaged with the publication and are the people who make or strongly influence purchasing decisions. You should have the data to demonstrate impressive answers to questions such as these:
1. How much time do readers spend with your publication? How many of the last four or six issues have they read, and how thoroughly do they read a typical issue?
2. Do they keep the publication for future reference? How many other people also read their copy?
3. What percentage would select your publication over other publications? Is it considered a “must read” in the industry?
4. What authority do they have to select advertisers’ products? Are they the final decision makers or do they strongly influence purchasing decisions?
5. What positions do readers have within their companies? Are they C level or high-level decision makers?
6. How clean is your circulation? Are you BPA audited, or, if not, can you produce postal or print records to prove circulation claims?
If you can’t demonstrate favorable responses to these questions, then use the results to think hard about retooling your publication for greater reader engagement and allegiance. But if you have strong results—and most association publications do—then it’s time to leverage your findings to the best advantage.

Knowing How To Leverage
Because media buyers often first approach a publication with demands for discounts and deals, publishers are often tempted to react defensively and agree to hold or cut rates. Don’t--at least not before you have identified the unique value that your publications alone can deliver to advertisers. Many association publications deliver access to an engaged readership available nowhere else, and it is foolish to sell that access short. Focus on offering media buyers more value, not lower prices.

Comb your research data for gems that set your publication apart. You might emphasize the allegiance of readers (“90% read an average issue cover to cover”), their purchasing authority (“95% are final decision makers on capital purchases”), or the scope of circulation (“Reaches 88% of C-level executives”). Whatever your strongest selling points are, don’t put them in a media kit and expect buyers to remember them. Put them in every communication vehicle you use—media kits, print promotions, Web sites, e-mail signatures, and more. It may take seven or ten exposures before a media buyer begins to remember what makes you a leader deserving of higher rates.

So steel yourself for the coming pressure on 2007’s rates. Forgo the beach book and spend the summer writing the book on how valuable your publication really is. Then, when the demands come for holding your rates, you will be ready with the proper response: No.