Dan Blank: Publishing, Innovation & the Web

Recently, I have found myself thinking about the luminaries from the early 20th century who are still with us.

• Some broke barriers, like Chuck Yeager.
• Others have voices with a force as strong today as 50 years ago: Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and B.B. King.
• We have the images of some burned into our collective memory, such as Mickey Rooney, Shirley Temple, Jerry Lewis or Elizabeth Taylor.
• There are folks like Stan Lee, whose creations we continue to see morph and evolve.
• Even momentary contributions left an impression enough to last a lifetime. Here I am thinking of the surviving Muchkins: Jerry Maren, Margaret Pellegrini, and Meinhardt Raabe.
• A few of the youngest members of the silent film era are still with us, such as Jean Darling, the last surviving cast member of the silent era version of Our Gang (Little Rascals.) And we can’t forget the other surviving Our Gang members from later versions of the series: Dorothy DeBorba, Jackie Cooper, Robert Blake, Mildred Kornman, Sidney Kibrick, Leonard Landy, Dickie Moore, Jackie Lynn Taylor, Jerry Tucker.
• And still others whose effect on the world leaves us without words big enough to describe them: Nelson Mandela, Queen Elizabeth, and the last few surviving veterans of World War I.

It’s been fascinating thinking of those still with us; those who shaped the 20th century, who created, who endured, who sacrificed, who inspired, and who leave us with a smile on our faces. In considering their lives, and those whose time has already passed, it puts a fire in my heart that says:

This is our time.

Our time, not to be a cog in the machine, but to innovate:

• Not to resist, but to move forward into the unknown darkness.
• Not to destroy, but to create.
• Not to grab control, but to empower others.
• Not to become jaded, but to believe.

David Carr recently pointed out the reasons why Oprah Winfrey’s influence will remain for decades with real meaning while her counterparts will be left with a mixed legacy of squandered potential. And I think there is a lesson in here for so many in media and publishing - whose race to win today’s battle and attain personal glory will soon be overshadowed by tomorrow’s flavor of the week. We need to look beyond these brief moments.

There is an opportunity - today - to improve education, publishing, media, communication, and assist people in their creative endeavors. And I believe that the digital landscape is empowering these areas in new ways, making them more accessible, even to those who have the fewest resources.

Yes, things we have known and love are changing. No, I do not know the future of printed newspapers & magazines, or the role of journalists, or the revenue streams that will support publishing companies. But if we focus only on preserving what already exists, we miss the opportunity to shape the future. The core of our beliefs lies in the same things: human expression, finding truth and sharing it, and empowering people to become smarter and more skilled.

Digital media is not the enemy of these things, and today we are creating the world that future generations will live in.

Imagine if you were present at the advent of the printing press, when sound came to film, or when the first radio broadcast went into homes, or the first television. You have witnessed and been a part of a shift in our culture & media just as large as any of these. Industries are being shaped by the changed in digital media at this very moment, and their affects will last for generations. The only question is this:

What is your role?

Will you drag your feet, bemoaning changes that are inconvenient to what you already know? Will you focus only on short term gain? Will you wait for others to make the hard decisions? Will you stand up or sit down? Will you be middling or will you lead the charge.

Will you be Willy Loman or Willy Wonka?

These are decisions that don’t come in a dramatic movie-like fashion, but in small ways, in small moments, every day. There is no immediate reward for those who seek the more difficult path to shape the future, rather than walk the path that others have forged. Yes, it is safer to move ahead once the market has been created, best practices established and rewards guaranteed - but does that create the legacy you are looking for?

Every day, I wake up excited to get to work, inspired by the experience and brilliance of those around me. And every day, I wonder what tomorrow will hold. As much as I appreciate the past, appreciate the sacrifice and bravery of others, I am reminded, that today is our time to create the future. In many ways we have a choice to either push forward or hold back, realizing that there is no manual and no assurances. And that sometimes, we need to walk to that cliff and jump into the unknown - together.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Take a look at the chart above. It is a chilling comparison of three media brands, each of which represent a different online strategy to engage a broad audience, and monetize that attention.

• Digg.com
• The New York Times
• Wall Street Journal

Digg’s CEO explains their focus as not being worried so much about profitability, and that their focus is "how to innovate, how to be important, how to be on the top of people’s minds."

But for brands like the NY Times and WSJ, whose credibility and brand value are already off the charts, they are focused not only on the issue of relevance in the online world, but revenue & profit. Go figure.

From what I gather, none of these brands have found a sustainable digital revenue model - one that isn’t using venture capital or other avenues (*cough* PRINT *uncough*) to sustain their digital strategy.

As I look at metrics like those shown above - HUGE audience numbers with each brand seeking these metrics to go higher, I can’t help but ask:

• How big of an audience is big enough to support an ad-based revenue model?
• Why aren’t these brands able to create ancillary products & services that create the scale in revenue that they need?
• Why is everyone still so focused on growth of attention and audience size?

And while discussion in the media seems to center on linking, I wonder: is Google really the problem here? Or, is it the fact that the media distribution model from the 20th century no longer works in the 21st century, and these brands aren’t moving aggressively enough to rethink their business at the very core?

If you can’t properly monetize 18 million unique visitors a month,
how will another 5 million help clarify the way forward?

David Cushman recently shared a presention on a similar topics, explaining how we have moved from a distribution model (which favored traditional publishers), to a social model. Among the topics he covers:

• Why the internet-powered long tail of demand is a disaster for traditional broad mass media models but a huge opportunity for specialists.
• How fragmentation means you can never hope to target all emerging niche communities - and what you can do to counter that.
• Why the control of content production, distribution and user experience is now in the hands of everyone - and what that means for publishers.
• Why we need to think of specialist content as ’social objects’ to discover where the ROI will come from when nobody wants to pay for content and no one clicks on the ads.

Tactics Without a Strategy

This is part of the reason why I am so enamored with B2B media… where the goal is not so much scale for the sake of scale, but on connecting a very select group of experts with highly useful solutions. It’s about building the markets, businesses and careers that drive our economy.

Assuming you work in B2B media (I always start with this assumption!), how do you provide solutions to those in the market you serve? Do you offer direct solutions (such as a service that directly enables cost savings or revenue generation for your customer), or are they a step removed, such as providing information that could be used to make a decision that shapes the industry, but requires a few extra steps on the part of your audience.

How do you take that step closer? How do you directly provide solutions to common and simple problems that those in your industry have? If you are a content creator, do you just keep doing what you have always done, waiting for someone else in ad sales to monetize your content?

One thing to consider is that if you don’t step forward and offer those solutions, that your advertisers, industry organizations and consultants will. They will create events, training sessions, software, data services and the like, because it serves the goals of all involved. Likely, it will also drive revenue.

What Problems Do Those in Your Industry Have?

Hint: they don’t know. Analyze their day, their process, their goals, and identify the one step out of 40 that is broken. Defy their expectations for how things need to work. For every innovative solution, there was likely an expert telling you why it couldn’t work that way. That is, until someone makes it happen. Be that person.

You should constantly be collecting research, looking at data, talking to people. Every time you have an assumption, you should challenge it - not to slow down progress, but to find that gap that your competitors might be missing.

Focus on the basics. On simple things. Be really specific.

Be wary of broad generalizations, and break down each process in your audience’s daily workflow into tiny steps. Which of those steps is broken? Which steps can you eliminate? Therein lies potential revenue.

Look in odd places, don’t just go right for the areas that you or your competition already focus on. You will delight people when you identify a solution to a problem that they didn’t know how to address before. So many people assume the little barriers in life are just to be accepted. Challenge that concept by focusing intently on your customer’s goals, and finding ways to help them achieve those goals.

B2B Media is Not Just About Creating Interest, it is About Providing Solutions.

All of these conversations about "charging for the news" or "charging for journalism" are absurd, not because of the idea of charging, but because no one is defining the many components of news & journalism, how they are used, and where to focus effort. Will the NY Times be profitable if it charged for news about a Dell product release? How about a car bombing in Iraq - how much would they charge for that? Or what about sports commentary - how are they differentiating themselves enough to charge for that when ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and thousands of other sports news sources remain free?

Even in the cases where pay walls will work, it is not a complete solution, it is just one revenue stream. And in all likelihood, it is not one that will restore revenue and profits to the levels being lost by print.

Ads & Sponsorships are one model, but getting customers to pay you is another. If you rely solely on ads & sponsorships, how many page views is enough for your market? How many webinar sign-ups? How much growth can you garner year after year?

To differentiate your revenue streams, you may want to consider developing products that provide direct solutions. What service do you provide - could you provide- that people couldn’t live without?

If your brand doesn’t have the capabilities to create direct solutions, can you partner with existing industry groups, vendors, consultants to help develop these solutions?

You have to start not by thinking about your capabilities, but in identifying a need that your customers have.

Optimization vs Invention

While you are looking for those gaps, you can also be optimizing your existing products, ensuring they are evolving to serve the changing needs of your audience, and building a sustainable business, even if the scale of revenue is not yet ideal.

A brand can’t just focus on BIG ideas - those great new things that might be cool, but require tons of development time and coordination between multiple internal and external groups. What starts out as a bold new idea can often slip into mediocrity by the time it launches.

Constantly be optimizing your producs. How can you make simple small changes to your product each month? How can you measure the affects these changes have on your customers, not just the affects they have on your impression of its value.

If you can refine things 5% or 10% each month, think of how much better your product will be in 6 months.

My obsession this week has been the web software & services company 37Signals. An interview with majority owner Jason Fried, explains how they choose which products to focus on building:

"We’re much more about building things small-business owners can use and understand quickly. It’s not about bells and whistles. It’s about actually getting things done."

Isn’t this - exactly - the mission of serving niche markets - of enabling businesses and careers? As one 37signals customer describes them:

"We didn’t realize we had a need until we started using [37signal's product.] By starting to use it, we realized how backwards [we operated before.] There was no learning curve, everything just totally made sense. It pushes everything else out of the way and allows us to work really productively."

What solutions are your customers desperately waiting for, but unable to identify? What processes are holding them back? What opportunities are right under their noses?

The New York Times homepage has more than 300 things you can click on, and includes more than 2,000 words. Is this how the brand sees themselves? Is this providing value to advertisers? Is this the best experience for their audience?

Perhaps that is a difficult question to answer for a brand that serves a city of 8+million people, plus its larger national and international audience. But what about for more focused media brands in the B2B and B2C world: Are there digital products clearly defined, and acutely attuned to the business needs of their market?

How much different does the screenshot of the NY Times’ homepage look compared to other brands serving smaller markets? Are they making the hard choices to say what they are and what they are not? Likely, they are including everything they can, with the slightest hope that SOMETHING will catch the attention of someone in their market.

This kitchen sink approach will likely not deliver the sustainable revenue growth that publishers and media brands need.

Clarity of Purpose

"Complexity is often a sure sign that the functional needs have not been solved."
- Yvon Chouinard, founder & owner of Patagonia (Let my People Go Surfing, p94)

That quote was in reference to the design of climbing gear and outdoor clothing, but easily applies to online media.

Function is an inherent part of performance, and most companies make willing compromises to the function of their products. Yvon goes on to describe what separates good products from great products:

"The best-performing firms make a narrow range of products very well. The best firms’ products also use up to 50 percent fewer parts than those made by their less successful rivals. Fewer parts mean a faster, simpler (and usually cheaper) manufacturing process. Fewer parts means less to go wrong; quality comes built in. And although the best companies need fewer workers to look after quality control, they also have fewer defects and generate less waste." (Let my People Go Surfing, p96)

A recent profile of the fake newspaper The Onion shows how success is not about putting out as much content as possible, but on focusing intently on creating only the very best ideas and scrapping the rest:

"We spend hundreds of hours in the room deconstructing the jokes. I don’t think there’s anything comparable to the amount of material we generate and reject just to come up with the week’s headlines.”

Creating Unique Value

The other book I am making my way through right now is Avinash Kaushik’s Web Analytics 2.0. A question he asks early on is: are you collecting data, or are you actually understanding the needs and behaviors of your audience?

This too can be a distinction in the entire product lifecycle: a focus on serving content instead of listening intently and optimizing products to better suit the needs of the target market.

A huge challenge facing most B2B and B2C media brands is commoditization: that when you search Google News on a story, you are presented with HUNDREDS of sources for the same story. See the photo below.

This affects commonly held differentiators between competing brands. Nowadays, "breaking" news is often mistakenly referred to as the person who posts it to their website 5 minutes before their competitor does. And even in the established media, "journalism" is more rare than most would have you believe. There is a huge difference between sharing news that is more and more easy to find, and offering a truly unique service that will enable business and career growth in your market.

If you take the label & brand name away from your product, is the quality and the brand distinction painfully obvious to your customers?

Creating a Business

All of the changes in publishing and media should create an OPPORTUNITY for business growth. Consider Apple’s foray into the mobile phone world: With 35% market share, Nokia made $1.1bn profit in Q3. The iPhone, with 2.5% market share made $1.6bn.

Here is one publisher’s take on the current situation for magazines:

"Until the economy went south and the cost of goods for producing and distributing magazines went far north, the one-legged publishing model [relying only on ads] was still meandering along. Now we are all paying the price because we are losing titles that had an audience and dedicated editors who served them. So, who is to blame? The truth is we all had a hand in this one. Advertisers and agencies still want MORE readers for their money because they have not figured out how to be comfortable with engagement metrics and place value on the editorial voice. Publishers keep feeding that beast and driving circulation levels to unnatural heights that are only sustainable by giving away a significant percentage or charging a few cents for each subscription."
– Michela O’Connor Abrams, President, Dwell Media

Where are the gaps in your market? Where are the opportunities to clarify the value you can deliver the businesses you serve? How can you differentiate from your competitor - not in a matter of degrees - but by orders of magnitude? How can you create a suite of must-have products, each with different types of revenue supporting them?

So many questions… time for mid-afternoon coffee!

"It’s really scary out there." That’s a phrase I keep hearing again and again.

When I consider the challenges facing editors & content creators, among them is the fact that they have precious few resources to do a massive amount of work. On top of that, there is a constant barrage of reports of their demise, which is never pleasant.

So, the question I have isn’t: "How do we do more with less," but rather:

How do we do exactly the right things - and only those right things - really really well?

I have been exploring this issue recently with some posts on editorial ROI:

• Editorial ROI: Maximizing Performance With Few Resources
• Editorial ROI: Going from Good to Great

And want to continue that exploration today, considering lessons from three children’s movies along the way.

The Illusion of "Value"

Everything is valuable, to someone, somewhere. The tough part is decising which efforts have ENOUGH value to really shape your industry. Where is the line between "some" value and "incredible" value - the line between a nice product, and a must-have product?

In B2B media, that can be defined in a number of ways, but here is one I like: you need to provide something that enables business and careers within the market you serve.

A definition like this goes beyond just "informing" or "adding context," becoming an essential piece of the process.

This week, I have continued online editorial analysis of some brands within RBI, digging into web analytics and segmenting data to make it more meaningful. When you do something like this, you find typical long tail graphs when looking at performance of content over a particular time frame.

Take a look at the long tail chart to the right. It measures article performance for 37 articles over the course of one month. Now, the articles in the middle and to the right took a fair amount of effort to create, and have SOME value to their market. The question is:

How much value is enough to justify the effort?

For an editorial team of 5 staff members covering their market in print, online and at events, this is a critical question.

When the members of that team are still at their desk at 7pm and wondering how they can get to everything on their plate - it is this graph and this question that can help answer it. If they aren’t measuring what is worthwhile and what isn’t, then their workday keeps getting longer and longer.

And this is what discerns "good" products from "great" products. Making those hard choices.

I was recently considering this same concept after watching the movie version of Where the Wild Things Are. This is a movie that made some very clear and very controversial choices in terms of style, characters, plot and production. And at every step of the way, the director Spike Jonze had to battle his way forward with the studio, who would have preferred more obvious choices - something more akin to Shrek.

People’s opinions on the resulting film will vary. Personally, I found it to be a nuanced worked of art that deals more honestly with the conflicting desires, hopes, emotions and realities of both adults and children. Here are three great articles on the film from the NY Times:

• A Long Profile of the Director and Creation of the Movie
• Movie Review
• Further Reflections on the Film

All in all… Spike Jonze decided that the "value" of his film would be measured by something greater than box office earnings… by how deeply it served his audience. For him, it had to transcend normal expectations and become something more complex… a work of art. And this is where I find relation to B2B media and the markets they serve, which are about more than just scale (selling a lot of a particular media product) - they are focused on the depth at which you are shaping these tiny niches filled with experts - people who are looking for solutions to complicated problems.

And this is what discerns a "good" product, from a "great" product. It should be noted that the movie seems to be doing well at the box office.

Don’t Fade Away.

My weekly obsession this week was watching the Wizard of Oz again, and then researching its history, meaning and legacy. And like all things, I couldn’t help but find a metaphor for publishing.

Roger Ebert describes the film:

"The ending has always seemed poignant to me. Dorothy is back in Kansas, but the color has drained from the film, and her magical friends are mundane once again"

This may be so, but at the end of the film, she is left with two additional things:

1. An appreciation for just how special the people around her are, and for this place called home.
2. An understanding that she alone must create her adventure in life, to make decisions, to stand up, to be, and to create. Friends will help along the way, but it is for her to start the journey.

Much like the modern publishing & media company, like journalists, like those trying to navigate the waters of the digital world, there is a fight to remain relevant, to remain profitable, and to fill their hopes and desires for a bright and exciting future. Dorothy’s struggle is not just to go home, but to find her own voice… to make the transition from the child that no one has time for, to the adult who will be the compass for her own life.

For those of us in publishing and media today, we find ourselves having crash landed in MunchkinLand.

A strange world, with strange rules and incredible danger. And this is why - especially in B2B media - there is such a need for AMAZING products. Products that enable industries, that push careers forward, products that simply put a smile on people’s faces.

The danger is not in being scooped up by flying monkey - the danger is irrelevance. The danger is in changing too slowly as new competitors eat up marketshare or push forward with a new service that required a risk that few were willing to take.

To fight this danger, it takes a single and simple step to engage it… to go down that yellow brick road.

And this is not just a cutesy metaphor, it is a measure of will. Consider this:

"In the past 10 years alone [Steve Jobs] has radically and lucratively reordered three markets — music, movies, and mobile telephones — and his impact on his original industry, computing, has only grown."

Getting Past Barriers.

Now, if I had to identify the biggest barrier to positive change for those in media, it wouldn’t be technology, and it wouldn’t even be attitude. It would be cognitive dissonance. The fact that people are running on their treadmills so quickly, juggling so many tasks while doing so, and singing a song filled with passion at the same time, that they can’t step back to strip everything away to consider strategy fresh and new. The problem isn’t recognizing that there are barriers, but in accepting that they themselves are the barrier.

How do we find room for improvement? We stop, and we do some of the following:

• Measure Performance
  Two weeks ago I gave some basic examples using long tail graphs. For truly insightful ways of understanding how your business is performing online, go to the master, Avinash Kaushik, and his new book Web Analytics 2.0. My copy just arrived in the mail, so it should be a fun weekend ahead!

• Have Goals
  Simply reporting the news is not a goal. Do you know specifically how your brand affects the business and careers of your market? If you can’t answer that question, then you may need to rethink your value in a world where information is cheap, but solutions are rare.
• Test
  This can be as simple as A/B testing an article headline or as advanced as testing a new layout or product performance before launching. Also… don’t be afraid to test products that you have been producing for years, you might be amazed to find incredible value in small improvements.
• Focus
  Don’t be afraid to stop doing certain things. If all of your products aren’t amazing or don’t serve an incredibly essential need in your market, then they are likely expendable.
  

  If an element of your brand isn’t amazing,
  then it is simply watering down your product offering
  and wasting your resources.

  You can approach this in large ways or small ways. Often, when analyzing a blog strategy for a brand, I won’t hesitate to advise that they kill a blog or two. Doing so ensures that their other blogs gets more resources, and readers aren’t overwhelmed by an unfocused strategy.

• Focus on Unique Value
  Identify overlaps in your product offering to that of your competition. If they are covering the same news you are in the same way, then you can expect problems in garnering attention and wooing advertisers. And being mildly unique is not enough to find the kind of growth that you need… look for exceptional ideas that eclipse your competition.
• Benchmark
  Look around and give an honest assessment of your performance compared to that of your competition. Be wary of relying on survey data that says your audience prefers you over your competitor by 90%. That data is likely not nuanced enough to shape the future of your brand.

  Consider this even in small ways, such as measuring your social media strategy. Don’t be satisified with 1,000 followers on Twitter, be satisfied when you have 500% more followers than you nearest competitor, are listed 10 times more han they are, and you have way more @replies and coversation.

• Come Together
  Bring IT developers, web business managers, sales teams, editorial teams and others together more often to improve and create products as a group. Each segment of your staff has incredible insights that need to be shared. If you aren’t chatting with folks outside of your immediate group, then you are missing connections that are right under your nose.
• Research
  Of course, the real answers to the future of your business lies with your customers. All you need to do is observe and ask. Don’t go on assumptions, or settle on expected answers to easy questions. Dig. Ask the difficult questions again and again.

We can’t let assumptions be confused with evaluation - that because we believe something should do well, that that was in fact what happened. We need a sober and honest look at how things actually performed, why, and how we can improve the next time around.

A key question to ask your editorial team:

How can you and your products become a part of the business process for your industry?

Print is still a core way B2B media can serve their audience, but to find a future that is full of growth, one needs to find the opportunity gaps - the places where you can add value at critical stages of the business cycle.

This may have little to do with news. It might have little to do with articles. And that’s okay.

It’s hard turning a ship when the weather is violent and the compass broken. But in the end, this quote from The Goonies applies to all of us in publishing and media:

"This is our time."

I have been swimming in the web metrics for several of RBI’s brands recently, and am constantly amazed at the insights that pop up. The question I am given again and again is:

"How can we increase performance?"

Sometimes this question is with regards to an entire editorial strategy, other times it is focusing on just one content channel such as blogs, or it gets into focusing on one particular blog, newsletter, video series or Twitter account.

When looking for improvements, you try for the straightforward solutions first - tried and true tactics for online content:

• SEO training
• Structure content so that it is scannable

• Use images to engage readers
• Use links to connect great content

• Focus a lot of effort on headlines
• etc, etc, etc.

Most media brands are no longer amateurs in online media. They have been doing this for years, and have long ago realized that this it’s not a choice of print vs web, but of serving readers wherever they are.

What this means is that the answers to the question "How can we increase performance" are no longer simple. Why?

• Because it is not easy to serve experts, which is what B2B markets consist of;
• Because audience behavior is changing quickly;

• Because there is more competition nowadays;
• Because revenue models have shifted;
• Because search has changed the media landscape;
• Because media brands are expanding their product lines to include a variety of revenue models;
• Because while tactics can be quick, strategy takes time to analyze, implement, measure, and iterate.

In my recent diggings to answer the question about increasing performance, I find that every answer leads to another question, and then every question leads me to a better understanding of the needs and behaviors of the audience & product I am focusing on.

For example, if I focus on a particular blog, I find myself segmenting and segmenting to get to the heart of what is going on, and find opportunity in the gaps. For instance:

• Discern What is Working and Why
  Critically looking at top content, analyzing it based on specific time periods & marketing channels, and looking at deeper metrics such as age of the blog entry, bounce rate and average time readers spent with it.
• Focus on Core Audience
  Considering different audience types, and how a product can serve core readers and a broader audience in different ways.

• Segment Search Traffic
  Reviewing search traffic separately from other referrers. SEO is incredibly important to a media brand, but each marketing channel requires its own analysis, because each has different underlying behavior patterns and engagement.

• Understand the Niche Market
  While metrics are critical to analysis, you also need to get in the trenches, reaching the blog, the comments, and reviewing competitors offerings. If you can’t see the product from the perspective of the audience, then you are going to miss the opportunity for improvement.

• Embrace Research
  Surveys, usability testing and industry research is a critical element to blend with web analytics and anecdotal evidence. If there is one thing I would love to see more of, it is primary research on niche markets.

• Listen
  Talking to the editors, to the sales team, to the external bloggers to find out more about the audience, what they need. Often this means reading between the lines - usually an audience doesn’t ask for what is missing, they only ask for what they know you already deliver and what they are already expecting. In an ideal situation, you would be able talk to readers often.
• Look Outside The Box
  Look outside a particular market to find ideas for growth. Applying idaes from another field can be a powerful competitive advantage.

Overall, the goal is to take things from good from the great. And that’s difficult, because:

It’s hard to look at something that is good, maybe even REALLY good,
and say "this isn’t good enough."

This week I have become mildly obsessed with a four part interview with Ira Glass, host of NPR’s "This American Life" radio series. He talks about storytelling:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

When Ira discusses the challenge for him and his team, he talks about how hard it is to find a great story, and how valuable it is to not be afraid to throw out "good" ideas, "good" stories, and considerable effort. Ira says they end up ditching half of the ideas that they actually moved forward with, meaning that they are willingly throwing good stuff in the trash.

His reasoning is that, when you throw something "good" out, it gives the chance for something GREAT to be born.

For B2B media, what this means is moving beyond simple answers, beyond adding on one more tactic to an existing strategy. It means focusing on two things:

• Understanding and serving the needs of the markets that one is focused on, and always willing to rethink what those needs are and how audience behavior evolves and changes.
• Constantly refining the products & solutions that you are offering.

In the media world, some are making a big play in the "content" space by churning out a huge number of articles:

• Demand Media paying $15 per article from freelancers.
• AOL is ramping up its low-cost content strategy in a similar way.

Will such a strategy work for B2B markets - those filled with highly experienced experts who need advanced solutions to move their business forward? Will "good" be good enough for these markets? Will "good" put smiles on the faces of those deep in the trenches? Will "good" grow media revenue models?

When considering how a brand serves the needs of their market and rethinks the value of their product offering, Gary Hamel offers the following advice:

"Organizations need to move from building competitive advantage to building evolutionary advantage over time, because no matter how good your strategy is, strategies die. For the first time in the history of the world, each new generation is born into a new world with new technologies, new preferences, and new ways of communicating… Organizations get into trouble when they don’t change their offering as fast as the needs of their customers have changed."

Today, I want to discuss how an editor or content creator can use some really basic web analytics to improve the performance of their products and deliver higher return-on-investment for their efforts.

The chart above is a pretty typical example of a "long tail" graph. I made up the numbers above, but let’s consider that it represents articles by a single editor for a B2B media brand. So, what we are looking at is the performance of 37 articles based on page views, over a given time frame.

And that is well and good. When you consider things like this over a longer time frame - say, a year - with a mix of new and archived content, the long tail makes a lot of sense. But what about when you measure it differently, including:

• Only new content.
• A focused (eg: short) time frame.

• Content from a single channel/topic/author.

So, for the above example, let’s consider that this person wrote those 37 articles in a 1 month time period, and their page view data was measured for the same time frame.

Suddenly, things are not all that well and good. Here’s why:

Now, page views are just one way to measure article performance, and a chart like this begs a lot of questions. But, it is clear that for whatever reason, most of that editor’s efforts are not garnering much interest among their intended audience.

When you see those articles on the bottom right, you have to ask yourself: Why bother? Who is this serving? Was this critical content that my audience really needed?

You won’t find the answers in the chart - that will take further research. But this is why I love looking at data on editorial content:

Not because data inherently answers any questions, but because it asks just the right questions.

A chart like the one above should not lead to direct actions, but should raise some red flags about rethinking how that editor spends their time, and how the editorial strategy of that brand is shaped. It also raises significant questions about the needs of that market - what exactly are people desperately searching for? And of course the third thing to consider here is whether it is indeed superb content, but not well marketed or presented, so it gets lost in the shuffle.

Across magazines, newspapers and other media outlets, you keep hearing about staffs shrinking - fewer people to shoulder the load. So they have to be focusing their efforts on JUST THE RIGHT THINGS.

One thing that is empowering online content creators is the incredible wealth of data on their audience’s preferences and habits. Whether you look at web analytics, research data, industry trends, usability testing, or direct feedback through mechanisms like social media - it is easier than ever to find out what people want and how they behave.

Charts like the one above should not be used as a negative judgment - but as a useful tool, helping to ensure a media brand is helping their audience by providing highly useful content and services.

Digging Deeper

One thing I have been spending time on recently is digging. Peeling away the layers of the onion - to go from huge web metrics about an entire brand, to focusing in on specific web metrics that a single editor can affect.

For someone sitting in a gray cube, knowing that their brand’s website traffic is down 3% doesn’t give them any direction. But, knowing which of their 20 articles did great, and which tanked - that puts things in context. And there are so many ways to slice and dice the data.

Here is just a small example of the many long tails that happen within a single brand’s web content, within a single month. For every editor, for every topic, for every channel - you have a variety of long tails:

Maybe each of these are metrics for four different authors. Or maybe for four different content topics. Either way, each asks compelling questions about what is working and what isn’t, and where the ROI is the highest.

These charts may also make you consider how you are packaging and marketing this content. Is there something in the system that needs to be tweaked?

Clearly, there are their other ways to measure the value of a piece of content besides page views. But that said, you have to start somewhere!

The Forest for the Trees

If someone only write articles, it there is a chance that they may not realize the full value of other products (such as events, webcasts, blogs, white papers, training courses, ebooks, newsletters, etc.) to both their brand’s revenue streams and to their audience. When considering ROI and where to put scant resources, editorial teams need to consider ALL their products.

One way I have been exploring this is through an audience and revenue report geared towards editors. Here is a sample report with fake data:

A report like this can be modified in a number of ways to suit different needs. But I think it would be eye opening for many journalists & editors to see something like this - details on what products are driving revenue & audience growth, and which are on the upswing, or are declining.

The question one should ask is: am I focusing on the right things?

There are so many ways you can segment and combine data to make it useful. You can view it by product type, or audience segment, or age, or author, or marketing channel, or content type (reviews vs commentary vs blogs vs news vs features) ,etc. You can (and should) combine data, and then combine it with traditional research metrics. Likewise, you can segment by core visitors vs search referrers, or time of day, or any number of measures.

When you begin looking at data, it’s not long before you begin asking some interesting questions, such as:

• How many of your visitors would you describe as core members of your community - those who come back again and again, and are highly engaged in your content? How are they behaving on your site, and what are their needs?
• How much traffic was search engine "accidents." Articles that performed well, but a large segment of visitors stayed for mere seconds on an article, finding that its content was clearly not what they were looking for?

It’s impossible to tell where journalism & media will be 12 months or 12 years from now. But if the solutions are elusive, it is not for lack of data.

Something special is happening in a Publishers Weekly blog, and I wanted to share the story with you. PW has a blog called ShelfTalker that is authored by 3 childrens booksellers - folks who spend all day selling books to kids & their parents.

Now, oftentimes people express to me that they feel blogs are about "controversial" topics and opinions - as if it is supposed to be a sideshow for cheap jabs and silly topics. But what is happening on ShelfTalker is important, and serves as an example as to why blogs matter, and why they are pushing things forward in B2B media.

In September, one of the bloggers, Elizabeth Bluemle, wrote a post about the lack of children’s books that feature characters of color:

"There’s not a whole lot out there in the children’s book world featuring… books with black characters who lead 21st-century lives in a vibrant world of ethnic diversity." Most books with black characters are "about slavery, civil rights, and the struggles of interracial relationships." She expresses how black children "like all children, deserve to be active, lively participants in the children’s literature of the present… Somehow, the politeness of political correctness has ended up quashing a lot of what began as an authentic, hopeful, brilliant, warts-and-all exploration of cross-cultural joy and beauty that came out of the Sixties."

This is a topic that Elizabeth had long planned on addressing, and her post went deep into the issue with examples and perspectives. What followed was remarkable:

• 70+ comments

  The reaction was immediate and overwhelming, giving further examples supporting the article and underscoring how important this issue was.

• 30+ emails
  Publishers & authors reached out to Elizabeth directly, sharing their thoughts and experiences.

• 300% traffic growth
  When compared to blog posts in the previous 5 business days. The first day the post was live received triple the traffic that other blog entries did on their first days. Even on the second day, traffic was up 254% compared to the second day of traffic of other blog posts.

Why? Because Elizabeth hit upon an issue that is important for the publishing industry to discuss, even if she is far from the first person to talk about these issues. Blogs and social media allow an honest an open way to do this, integrating perspectives from all over the industry, far and wide, top to bottom.

What is the value in this example for other B2B brands? Let’s take it apart to consider how blogs and social media can be an essential part of serving B2B markets:

• Connecting Experts
  
  Image by patrick h. lauke

  When members of a B2B market blog, they are often sharing real world experiences that they are seeing day in and day out - not just theory, trends or research reports. Working where I do, I see this happening across industries, as engineers, teachers, retailers, designers, managers, and a wide variety of experts start their own blogs.

  Blogs and social media go beyond people’s specific roles in their career, allowing them to start and add to conversations that they might not get the chance to in a regular work day. What becomes apparent is the wide range of knowledge, and the incredible passion locked away in these B2B industries. It is no longer just journalists who are reporting on an industry, but every audience member now has a voice too. Anyone - even a bookseller from northern Vermont - has a voice on the world stage in their market.

• Exposing Important Issues
  

  Image by donjd2

  Inherent in this is a sense of personal expression, of important issues bubbling up. These are the type of real world conversations that start first in the backroom at work or at lunches between conference sessions - long before the conference itself addresses the issues.

  For a blog like ShelfTalker, this is a deep dive into how real families interact with books, and how booksellers like Elizabeth, and the other ShelfTalker bloggers Josie Leavitt and Alison Morris, find ways to serve their needs.

  This is an incredible service and market research tool for other booksellers, publishers, authors, and of course, readers and the general public.

  Even for topics that aren’t initiated in a blog, it is nice that individuals don’t have to wait for bigger media players to shift the conversation in a certain direction. They can explore topics at will; what’s more, they can work towards solutions.

  Blogs are not just a broadcast mechanism - a twist on the same paradigm publishing has known for hundreds of years - but rather, they enable action. People can use blogs in many different ways, but the best become something closer to a service than just a content source.

• Serving a Mission in New Ways
  
  Image by emdot

  Blogs are one example of the larger shifts in media, but they are also opportunities waiting to be leveraged. A blog is simply a tool - a platform; how one uses it is up to the author. Elizabeth’s example shows how the value created in a blog can be both expansive and nuanced.

  It is no longer about "broadcasting articles," but about connecting people, providing solutions, encouraging debate and communication, and exposing niches within niches. This is why I feel B2B media is perfectly suited for the web.

  There is a recent article in The New Yorker profiling Michael Ignatieff, the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and potential future Prime Minister. He had spent a couple of decades living outside of Canada, and describes how that experience actually makes him a stronger political candidate:

  "I’m much criticized for having been away for a long time, but I think sometimes you see places more clearly from afar than you see them close up."

  In many ways, this statement reminded me of the role social media and blogging has taken throughout the B2B world - a powerful way to gain perspectives from a variety of sources - each on an equal footing - each helping to shape the future of their market.

Further reading: I profiled the ShelfTalker blog back in July.

The comic above really made me take pause and realize that the future of media & publishing is being sown today. So, I decided to take a trip to the future, which turns out, is just a subway ride away.

Over the past five years, I have worked with the PS 123 elementary & middle school in Harlem on various volunteering projects that involved publishing, literacy and community. These efforts began with a company sponsored volunteering program at RBI, and events co-coordinated with my colleague Champion Kathleen McNamara.

Through the years, my involvement has grown, and this year, it has taken a leap. A visual history:

This Fall, I have made a personal commitment to the faculty and students of the school, and will be integrating my efforts in two ways:

• As a curriculum advisor for their 5th, 6th and 7th grade, focusing on publishing and new media.
• As the advisor for their student newspaper staff.

And I am proud to introduce the student newspaper staff of PS 123:

I have spent nights and weekends preparing for these efforts, and just launched two new products for the newspaper, a website and Twitter feed:

• PS123today.com
• @ps123today

In creating the curriculum for our sessions, I considered the skills these students would need and what their role is in serving their community. I will be meeting with them each week to educate them on how to leverage new media, and use it to serve the needs of their community.

Our first meeting was this week, and I think they were a bit taken aback by how different this year will be compared to a quarterly print newspaper that we did in previous years. These students are mostly 6th and 7th graders, and their growth since last year is obvious the moment you walk in the room.

They each have a clear voice & personality, and are actively shaping their identity day by day. I couldn’t be more excited about working with them and empowering them to reach their goals.

The year will not be without its challenges - not the least of which was a shooting & stabbing that took place outside the school on Monday morning. It involved older teens and was gang related, but clearly, these events echo through the halls of PS 123, underscoring the dire need to support these students.

And these students are the future of publishing and media - I will be learning as much from them as they will from me.

As I consider how the media industry will change from now until they graduate from college, I realize that it is fully in yours and my hands. How are we shaping this future?

This question is not unlike many others posed in this economy… how are we addressing the needs of today, while building a strong foundation for tomorrow, one that looks to create real value, not just economic bubbles, and that learns from its past mistakes?

Which brings me back to the cartoon up top. Surely, businesses need to run with an ever greater efficiency - but this cannot be a single strategy for growth. For a company like Condé Nast, there will be casualties such as Gourmet magazine, but the greater question remains: what is Condé Nast doing to innovate, to address their audience’s needs in new ways, and how are they building a solid foundation that looks at revenue and audience growth beyond the next quarter?

Gourmet magazine’s closing has had ripple effects this week for all in media and publishing - yet another sobering reminder that anything is possible. And like many things nowadays, we are left with compelling questions:

• Is the problem the lack of great ideas, or the inability to execute well on the great ideas that are already out there?
• Will iterative & incremental growth be enough to bring stability?

• Will tomorrow’s media company be comprised of resources, scale and structure that we are familiar with today?

The business leaders of today have a great responsibility in making these decisions to shape things, and these are just a few of the many questions they must tackle.

As I began to work with the students of PS 123 this year, and learned about their skills, their hopes and considered their future, I realized that the future is now. And addressing this is both a responsibility and a privilege.

A HUGE thanks to my manager Traci Young for her support for my efforts with PS 123!

Let’s talk about paid content, and look beyond the discussions around paywalls and micropayments. I want to explore one example of an online brand creating multiple digital revenue streams, and consider lessons in this for media companies - especially B2B media companies.

How a Blogger Earns Six Figures a Year
One blog I follow is - of course - a blog about blogging, called ProBlogger.net. It is run by Darren Rowse, a really nice guy from Australia, who sort of fell into this whole thing several years back, and has since become the guru of blogging. This week, he launched a community forum called "Problogger.community." And, he charged for it!

For $1.95 per month, you gain access to the forum where you can learn and collaborate with other members.

Some details on the program:

• $1.95 per month for "entry level" access. This is an introductory price, locked in for life.
• He will be adding on additional levels in the future.
• Why is he charging?
  • He wants to pay forum moderators.
  • A private community keeps out many spammers.
  • He doesn’t want a massive community of hundreds of thousands, but rather, a more intimate and intentional group, who can get to know each other and collaborate.

Darren says that people asked him to do this for years. It wasn’t until he did an experiment and saw the value that was created that he made it real.

The site has not been live a week yet, and he has about 1,000 members. So that’s $2,000 immediately after launch. Let’s consider some scenarios for how this can scale:

• The $1.95 price is an introductory price, Darren will be raising the price sometime in the future. Even if he raises the price to only $2.95 per month, he now increased revenue by 50%
• This is the size of Problogger’s existing community from his free services:
  • Monthly Traffic to Problogger.net - 531,804 unique visitors viewing 866,093 pages
  • RSS Subscribers - 123,000
  • Newsletter Subscribers - 29,890 (across a number of different lists)

  • Twitter Followers - 76,273 followers
  • ProBlogger on Facebook - 15,242 fans
  • ProBlogger Job Boards - around 2000 RSS subscribers

  Now, let’s make a random assumption that the newsletter subscribers are those who might be most engaged because they have taken the step to share their email address with Darren. And of this group of 30,000 interested people, let’s assume that only the top 10% are true hardcore bloggers, willing to pay a couple of bucks a month to participate in a forum.

  Figuring that half of these people (1,500) get the introductory rate, and half get a "normal" rate of $2.95 (again, an assumption), then that means Darren gets $7,350 in revenue each month from this forum, with a stable roster of 3,000 members.

I don’t think any of these estimates are wildly hopeful, and we are talking about $88,200 dollars in revenue a year, on top of his other efforts with Problogger. Not only that, but he has stated that there will be additional premium paid content products coming out in the future.

Even if Darren can only hold onto 3,000 members at any given time, if those who jumped in at launch later cycle out of the system and all future members pay $2.95 per month, he still sees a 17% growth in revenue without any growth in user base.

But this is not the only way Darren is monetizing Problogger. Here are some other revenue streams:

• Print book (based on blog content he had already created)
• eBook (based on free blog posts session.)
• Advertising on the Problogger.net blog
• Affiliate programs

• Job Board

Not only that, Darren has quite a few other businesses and communities going:

• Digital Photography School
  
• Twitip
  
• Speaking/Training/Media

• Co-founder and shareholder of B5 Media blog network
• Plus other ventures to launch later in the year.

Darren is famously a "six-figure blogger," pulling in more than $100,000 per year through blogging, although, he doesn’t show me his paychecks. I think he has actually earned a few hundred thousand dollars in some years, but I’m really not sure. Either way, not bad for a man who owns his own business and doesn’t need to leave the house each day.

What’s more - Darren is actively building communities that are focused on HELPING people realize their goals and passions. This is very rewarding work, and he does it with a grace that is rather uncommon.

There are other examples of bloggers creating paid programs, such as Blog Mastermind, a course that opens its doors to a select number of members a few times each year, and not only takes members through a regimented program, but offers tools for its members to connect with each other for collaboration and business ventures. Here is a review of the course, with more details. They tend to charge about $75 a month, for a 6 month course. If they can get 200 people to sign up and stick through all 6 months, that comes out to $90,000.

Lessons for B2B Brands
So what lessons can a B2B publisher & media company take away from all this? Here’s a few:

• Diversify Your Digital Revenue Streams
  Online ad revenue is a great thing, but this is B2B media - vibrant industries of experts who need professional knowledge and services. There are many opportunities to diversity digital revenue streams with things such as webcasts, eBooks, virtual events, forums, training & education courses, research services and more.
• Focus Not Just on Information, But Transactions
  Merely informing an audience is not enough, a media brand needs to have a profound affect on the businesses in their market. Focus on products that are more transactional - that create revenue opportunities or partnerships within your audience - that have a direct influence on their business success.

• Build Expectations & Behavior Patters with Your Audience around Paid Content
  You don’t have to bet the bank when considering paid content models. Start with one small (but valuable) effort that doesn’t have to create a huge profit stream. Part of what you are doing here is establishing behavior patterns and expectations with your audience that it’s okay to pay for highly valuable content. You don’t have to put up a huge paywall, you can just ask for a few dollars for one very specific piece of content.

• Test Ideas First
  I love the absurdity of the expression "ready, fire, aim." We are lucky to have such a wealth of audience data and market research at our fingertips. Run small experiments that don’t require payment, and then comb through its performance metrics. Did it attract the attention you hoped it would? Did the delivery system work efficiently? Did your audience find the product incredibly valuable?
• If You Build it They Won’t Come
  You must fully commit to nurturing new products. Darren created this forum after people had asked for it for years. He only launched it when he knew he could make a clear personal commitment to spending a lot of time interacting with people in this community, and after he hired moderators to do the same. Products like this need a lot of attention.
• Create a Low Barrier for Entry
  It will be hard to gain traction if you are working on a new business model that your audience is unfamiliar with, whose value is unproven, and then you assign a high price tag to it. Look at the success of iTunes or the Apple App Store - they made it incredibly easy and cheap to try it out - in with some cases free content, and in most others, a price tag of 99 cents.
• Promise High Value that Solves Problems
  Make a clear discernment between content that is "nice to have," and content that truly solves problems for your audience. They will likely only pay for the latter, as many news operations are now learning.

• Build a Platform
  Consider how your digital products create a platform, database or community that you can leverage again and again. This way, you are establishing another customer touchpoint, and are armed with the knowledge that these are the people who made a clear choice to share information or pay for content. Always be conscious to serve their needs, not exploit that relationship.
• Segment Your Audience
  Don’t think of your audience as one massive entity. It consists of a variety of roles, needs, and levels. You can offer products that are targeted to one segment of your audience, and allows greater trust to be built among participants who have so much in common. Niches are what B2B is all about!

Overall, consider how you can create a digital product offering with various levels of participation, from free, cheap to expensive products and solutions.

As the recession lingers, talks of paid content among newspaper and magazine brands has heated up. Some in traditional media feel that people are getting a free ride in the free content model of the web, while others are simply desperate for a sustainable revenue model.

In thinking about this, let’s review how we paid for content prior to the web:

• Newspapers:
  Not much has changed here: we paid either a single price per issue, subscribed, or fished a free paper out of the trash bins at Penn station. Personally, before subscribing, I bought a half priced New York Times at the end of the work day in front of Penn Station. And this was before the NY Times and Wall Street Journal hit the $2 per issue mark.

  But we need to consider how the value of the newspaper has changed in the past decade. Before the internet reshaped our world, the newspaper was so much more than just the news - it often contained stock prices, sports scores, coupons, classifieds, and comics, plus it was one of the only ways to feel a sense of community to our town or region through media.

  Nowadays, it’s not so simple as to consider how we can pay for The New York Times in digital form; the web has overwhelmed us with digital media, tons of news sources, along with communication channels such as email, Twitter and Facebook. The value of a single source of information is different today than it once was.

• Magazines
  I still love magazines - such a beautiful package. When I was younger, I was constantly scanning magazines at the local food store, at friend’s houses, and taking special trips to Barnes & Noble and Borders to read them.

  For magazine titles I loved, I would subscribe, and to this day, I am still amazed at how cheap subscription prices are. Magazines that cost $4-5 per issue, end up costing 40 cents or $1 per issue when you subscribe.

  My wife and I subscribe to quite a few magazines, but I often find that the intention to read them doesn’t always match up to reality. The magazines pile up, and good intentions often go out the door on recycling day.

• TV:
  In the beginning, the cost of the television set itself was the only barrier for entry to consume TV for free. (maybe you needed an antenna installed too.) Then cable came along, with it’s monthly fees to experience the joy of Carson Daly on TRL, and then a la carte packages and channels like HBO or the "family pack," which includes 5 stations you don’t care about, plus the Disney channel.

  But even with cable, no one paid their $40 or $80 or $100 per month just to get news - even with the advent of 24 hour news networks and financial news channels. It was always packaged with dozens of other channels, mostly focused on entertainment.

  My wife and I haven’t owned a TV or subscribed to a cable service in years - any TV I watch is online through sites like Hulu, CBS.com or archived episodes now available on Netflix.

• Music:
  It is incredible how much time in my life was spent shopping for records, tapes and cd’s. My friends and I would take road trips to distant record shops, and spend hour after hour scanning through their "used" bins.

  People I knew didn’t run around wildly buying cds, they tended to borrow and carefully consider which to purchase. In the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s there was not only just a huge culture around making tapes, but there was a practical reality to it. A blank tape cost less than a dollar, while a CD cost $15. Why were we never sued for buying a blank Maxell cassette tape back in 1991, considering that the most likely use of it would be to copy music from a friend?

  Back then, even just hanging out at the record shop was an experience… killing hours talking about music with the clerk, buying very little.

• Books:
  Much like music and magazines, I remember spending a lot of time reading in Borders, frequenting used bookstores, and borrowing from friends and family. And I have to say, I read plenty, but always had more books than I could possibly read, and still find there are plenty of books that I start, but don’t finish.

  Publishers are arguing over how much to charge for a Kindle book, as if that will save their industry. Personally, I don’t see my book buying habits being shaped by a difference of $5 in Kindle book price; I see it more as a problem in resources - I only have so many hours a day to consume media!

But you know what, all of that is really besides the point. What we need to consider is what people will pay for today. These things should be based on need, not based on propping up a business model that has eroded.

There is a lot of talk of two ideas to save the business models for media; keep in mind, that each of these means that a brand is asking for payment after a consumer buys their computers and then pays their internet bill each month:

• Pay walls for newspaper content
  Essentially blocking off a content area from the rest of the web. I suppose this is like the HBO model, or other premium channels on cable TV. An inherent problem with this model is that it provides opportunity for other businesses that make their content free. The web has illustrated that brand loyalty only goes so far… if people feel they can get remotely comparable quality elsewhere for free, they will.

  Likewise, if The New York Times puts up a pay wall, and limits everyone’s access to original reporting - stories they break - will this prevent the news item from "getting out?" If they uncover a big scandal, they might lock you out from their original article and reporting, but clearly the story will be all over the web in moments, as other news organizations are compelled to report on it.

  This is not at all to say that subscriptions and pay walls don’t and can’t work, but it is complicated at best.

• Micropayments for individual articles
  Brands would ask consumers to pay for each individual piece of content that they want to consume, but the cost would be incredibly low, like text messages. I’m not sure which of the older models this would be most like - perhaps it is similar to those CD singles that came out after an album did, that included one big song and two B-sides.

  To build a system like this requires an entirely new economy to be constructed on the web. However, the barrier is not in the technical end of things, but the social end of it - creating a new behavior pattern where people choose to pay a nickel for an article. Not an easy feat to pull off, but it does happen, as Apple has illustrated with their iTunes model for music, and their App Store on the iPhone.

These are not the only two potential business models, but they seem to be the two discussed most by traditional media players. Personally, I am intrigued by many of the ideas that Michael Masnick shares on his TechDirt blog. Fascinating stuff, well worth your time.

As we consider business models around media today, below is a list of things people pay for, along with examples of classic products to inspire:

• Things that Entertain
  
• Things that Help
  
  Image by erik jaeger
• Things that Connect
  
  Image by yarnivore
• Things that Enable
  
  Image by farnea
• Things that Inspire
  
  Image by armadillo444
• Things that Solve
  
  Image by huangjiahui
• Things that are Incredibly Unique
  
  Image by Homegrown {& the Bug}
• Things that Offer Convenience
  
  Image by bob gamble

Not sure if that list really helps anyone in media, but it was fun to put together. It is interesting to think about why some brands or products take off, while others languish.

For those in media, opportunity abounds - not by building a moat around an old business model, but by finding new ways to serve your audience in useful and fun ways.