Dan Blank: Publishing, Innovation & the Web » journalists

Are You Growing Your Skillset, or Becoming a Cog in a Machine?

Dan Blank — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:45:40 +0000

I’ve been reading about how companies such as Demand Media, Examiner.com, and Suite101 – those “content farms” – train their contributors on writing and web skills. These companies put a strong focus on creating efficient systems to organize a large group of people to do specific tasks.

“Early on we decided there would be four pillars of types of courses which will be reflected in 101 courses: editorial; marketing to a growing audience; technical skills, because publishing online means putting tools in the writers’ hands; and then information that is specific to Examiner.com, such as how our referral program works.”

The article makes it clear that these companies can’t require contributors to take the courses, and that while they feel there is positive results, they didn’t share much hard data on their effect.

But this had me considering how traditional media companies and publishers train and evolve the skillsets of their employees. Those in book publishing, magazines and newspapers. Many of these companies are smaller than they were five years ago – with each staff member doing multiple roles. Some may be doing more work to make up for “reduced headcount,” and others may be doing more work because of the changes in media.

For instance: a magazine editor who now must post articles to the web, not just print, send out a newsletter, and organize online contributors. This is not just more items they are responsible for, but a wider range of skills, some editorial, some management, some technical, some marketing, some print media, some online media.

How are companies not just giving these employees more responsibility, but more opportunity to excel at these tasks? Like the Demand Media’s of the world, traditional media companies need to scale systems and processes across a wide range of brands. So they put in systems for content management, for email, and the processes behind them, which clearly makes sense on many levels.

But are these staff members evolving their skills, or are they becoming cogs in the machine? Let’s take our print magazine editor example.

Are they learning how email newsletters drive business forward, and becoming experts in email marketing – or are they merely filling in a template with “content” that came from print or the website?
Are they learning the process of product development online – how to test and determine what makes a great homepage and article page – or are they merely racing to fill it with “content” that originated with a writer who would have written it the same for print?
When sourcing bloggers, are they digging into web analytics and researching who has existing influence in online communities, or are they tapping the same sources in their network – columnists from print who will now write print columns online?

This is in no way, shape, or form a complaint against templates, editors, print, or anything else. My concern is simply this:

How do we help those in established media companies grow their skills and evolve their careers? How do we take them from being cogs to controlling the levers of the machine? How do we increase employee satisfaction, not just their workload?

I can’t pretend to look into the future and think that large media companies in established markets (books, magazines, newspapers) will be larger. Likely, they will be smaller. But how can we make them hotbeds for talent, groups of vibrant people who are growing, who are pushing boundaries, who feel they are being not only respected for what they’ve done in the past, but respected enough to help them navigate a changing media landscape and grow their skillset for the future.

How do we get them to say “I am not a dime-a-dozen, I am Willy Loman.”

If you feel I can help you evolve the skillsets of your organization, give me a call: 973-981-8882. Here are some other ways you can connect with me:

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Editorial ROI: Going from Good to Great

Dan Blank — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:40:01 +0000

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:

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:

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."

Editorial ROI: Maximizing Performance With Few Resources

Dan Blank — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:02:05 +0000

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.

A Coordinated Effort: Serving Needs, Creating Revenue

Dan Blank — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:14:12 +0000

In the past few weeks, I have been talking about product development in B2B media and publishing. First, we looked at how to put customer needs first, and then at revenue streams that publishers have at their disposal. Today, I want to extend this discussion by looking at how editorial, sales, and advertisers can coordinate their efforts to create sustainable revenue generating products that meet the critical needs within their industries.

Let’s start at the end, and work our way backwards. This chart outlines a potential lifecycle for product development for B2B publishers and media companies. When looking at this chart, you can think about a scenario where an editorial team wants to do a big feature about sustainability in their industry. Timelines for each role (journalist, sales, etc) start on the left and move to the right, from idea to execution.

Things to look for in the chart:

Waldo, of course.
How the editorial and sales process aligns. How can they better integrate their efforts?
The repeating theme I mentioned 2 weeks ago: "Listen. Listen. Do." So, for every point on the timeline that a publisher is providing a solution to their customers, you should see two different points that they are gauging the needs and behaviors of those customers.
That customers and business partners are active participants: not just consuming information, but interacting with it, the content creators & sales teams, as well as ach other.

This chart is organized from the viewpoint of journalists and content creators. In reality, it should be flipped, with the customers on the top and journalists on the bottom. Here’s why:

B2B content should be both a RESULT, and a CAUSE.

It is a ‘result,’ because content creators should be responding to audience need. Likewise, understanding the needs of advertisers and business partners is a critical first step. Next comes potential product options (the blue line in the middle in the chart above.) Finally, we come to the sales and editorial teams within media companies, coming together to address the needs of their various audiences.

It is a ’cause’ because the goal is not to simply "inform" an industry through reporting – but to become a partner who solves critical business needs for those they serve. This is not to imply that editorial content will lack creativity or be able to set the agenda – to identify topics or viewpoints that need to be addressed. But that should come after analysis, not as a constant stream of editors filling content buckets each month.

Obviously, this paradigm is just one of many that B2B publishers and media companies can use. Either way, I think that these are some of the key elements for potential models moving forward:

Publishers Should be in the Business of Solving Problems.

Editorial and sales are a process of managing relationships and meeting needs. While writing an article or closing a sale is a key part of this – the goal is to have a measurable affect on the businesses they serve. This is why constant research and measurement is critical to drive business forward.
There Should be Multiple Product Offerings from Each Editorial Effort.

Editors do an incredible amount of work for each article and feature they produce. However, they often lose the return-on-investment by focusing on a single product (an article), instead of building multiple revenue generating products that can sustain the business, and target the many ways their audience can consume the information that the editors are producing. A single effort can easily be extended to create several products, each with their own sales channel.
70% of an Editor’s Job Should Occur After a Feature Launches.

Editors are now marketers, and they have previously unheard of ways of connecting with and partnering with their audience. Likewise, measurement tools are now inexpensive and available, allowing them to understand both the nuances about the needs of those they serve, and to what degree their efforts meet those needs.
Solving Advertiser & Business Partners’ Needs is Essential.

Advertisers now have many ways to directly reach their intended audience – and media companies are not always a part of that equation. This is a huge opportunity for publishers to understand the business goals of those business partners, and to assist in educating them and becoming an essential business partner. This is not just about serving an advertisement for them – this is about becoming consultants who can increase their business performance along very particular metrics.
"Reporting" on an Industry is Not Enough.

There was once a time when "an industry wouldn’t report on itself." That time has past, as each industry is rapidly learning to do just that through websites, blogs, twitter, social media and virtual events.

Advertisers and industry organizations are now direct competitors with media companies, providing training, information, news, and services directly to their audience and customers. For publishers and editors, this opens up an opportunity to not just report – but to get involved, assist in building their industries by serving advertiser’s and audience business needs.

Especially in B2B media – people might now expect information to be free, but business solutions that drive revenue and make industries more efficient – that is (and should be) expensive. This is where the modern B2B media company will find their future.
Editorial, Sales and Marketing Teams are Partners in the Product Development Process.

These three teams are each full of ideas, data, research, and deep connections to different parts of their industry; Each understands critical needs that need to be met; Each needs to partner early in the process of product development, to ensure that products are not just ‘good’ – but ESSENTIAL to those they serve.

Careers in Recession:10 Ways Media Professionals Can Help Their Careers

Dan Blank — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:46:55 +0000

The economic downshift has been tough on businesses, tough on jobs, tough on publishing & media, and tough on the advertisers, business partners and customers who support publishing and media.

It is clear that no business or individual is safe from the affects. Many folks I speak to show a great concern about their business and their careers. These are dedicated professionals who have families to support.

So here are some tips on how to not just stay relevant, but become essential to your business, as the economy continues to rattle our culture:

Focus on Quality – Even on the Web

If you work on traditional media – a magazine, a newspaper, radio, television, etc. – I would bet that you, your staff, and your organization put an unbelievable amount of resources into the quality of each production. Processes have been honed over decades, expectations are set in stone, and roles are very clear.

And that is no longer enough.

Your customers, your readers, your viewers – the people who are relying on you and supporting you are using the web. And, when they experience your work on the web, if it is anything short of exceptional, then the brand equity you’ve built over decades is squandered.

If you are a journalist who creates an article for print, you should make serious consideration to the ways you can improve the web version of the article – not just adding links, but re-imagining what the article can be online. Your readers aren’t reading something on the web with the same limitations of print, and they know this. Is your work organized to the way people read online? Are images and graphics integrated into it? Are links not just present, but truly useful?

The web is your portfolio. When a colleague, a friend, a source looks up your name on the web, what do you want them to see? A 3,500 word piece that looked great in print, but is now dumped online as a single paragraph? Should they have to hunt and peck to find more about you on the web, or will you take control to steer them in the right direction?
Connect with Your Network Online

If you still rely exclusively on your rolodex, planner, or the address book in your computer, email program or mobile device, then you have lost an edge over others in your industry.

If you are not easily found on the web, then for many people, you don’t exist. You are not findable, you are not reachable, old connections become irrelevant, and new connections become missed opportunities.

Social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter are not just about silly things – they are your link to professionals from around the world, potential sources, and people who might be searching for an expert just like yourself. For a journalist or media professional who meets hundreds of people a year through their work, social networks can be a low-maintenance way to stay in touch, and keep those valuable connections alive.

Again and again, journalists tell me about surprising connections that have come from using services like Twitter. These connections were wholly unexpected, and helped them do their jobs even better.

I understand the reticence that many people have to these services – to “putting yourself out there” in such an open and uncontrolled way online. I do think that you can take small steps into this arena without diving in. Either way though, your network is one of the most powerful things you have built in your career. Why not find new ways to connect with those who you respect the most – those who can help you the most.
Build Online Skills

If you don’t learn how to create compelling online content, then you are 50% as qualified as the next person in your industry.

You’re busy, I understand that. Perhaps there are web managers in your office that handle that side of things, and it is easy enough to let that process happen without you.

Usability studies show that people consume information and media differently on the web. For a content creator, this is essential to understand more deeply. So why not put in the extra time to ensure that content you created for offline media looks good when it is brought online.

As you learn new skills, you will invariably become more valuable to your organization, and learn new ways to think about the work that you do.
Understand Your Audience, Their Needs, and Their Behaviors

If you are only considering the way your audience USED to use your work and products, then you are quickly becoming irrelevant to their needs and the many ways that their behaviors are changing.

Focus intently on the needs of your customers. Don’t just ask for feedback from those in your business who you know very well, and are very similar to you – go out of your way to get feedback from a wide range of people in a wide range of roles.

Do usability testing on your product; do customer research more often and spend more than 15 minutes reviewing the report; look at web metrics every week; have conversations that are difficult, not easy; talk about what you are seeing and ask your colleagues what they are seeing.

This is where you see how the music industry (and now newspapers) dropped the ball in terms of the online opportunity. Instead of focusing on the needs of their customers, they focused on who to blame for the behavior shift. Then, they tried to find the biggest corporation with the deepest pockets who they could sue.

The music industry first targeted Napster, and once they ran out of easy targets, they did the unthinkable: they went after music fans, suing those who they needed most.

Newspapers seem to be following this lead: setting up this shift as a “fight” between them and a corporate entity they can cut a deal with, in this case, it’s Google. All the while, they aren’t focusing on the only person who can save their business: their customers.
Focus on the Right Things

Many media brands have been around for decades, and when they go to look for innovative solutions, they focus more on an “idea” and a “product” than they do on whether it truly serves a need for real people.

It’s challenging to come up with an innovative idea, and even more challenging to test the idea in front of an “average user,” some guy on the street who will decide your fate in a matter of moments. But these moments are essential.

Every day, each of us sees examples of businesses who put a huge amount of effort into creating a product or service that simply doesn’t work. Sure, it worked on paper, but it doesn’t solve your needs, nor the needs of anyone you know.

The people who create these products are often smart people who believe in what they are doing. But they were focused so much on the wrong target, that they missed the point. The goal is not the product, the goal is to solve a need. Get out in the field and test your ideas long before you put them into development. And keep doing that through the product’s lifecycle. You will be surprised at what you learn.
Get Business Savvy

For most media products, you can’t ignore the fact that the underlying business proposition that supports this work has changed. Advertisers can directly reach consumers; new media has changed the cost structure of print vs. digital delivery methods; classified ads that supported newspapers have moved online, etc.

For an editor, these issues may seem as though they are someone else’s problem, but they aren’t. At the very least, your career depends on finding solutions to these problems, so you may as well play a part in that.

Talk to your sales reps, talk to your business partners, and of course, talk to your customers and users. Learn what they are hearing and how their needs are changing. Mostly – think about how you are serving those needs. Not everything needs to have a price tag on it, but think creatively how a need can translate into a series of products, some that are immediate and free, and others that are specialized and expensive.

No one knows your business better than you do, and likely, your business can’t solve larger business problems without you.
Become a Complete Storyteller

You are an expert at what you do. Many of the folks I work with are experts with words – with conveying data, information and a story through language. Honestly, I am amazed at their talent.

While the core of what they do remains unchanged, the tools that are available to us all have. In fact, these tools have empowered us all to tell convey information and stories in more compelling and powerful ways.

For most media channels, even stock tables, the author is really telling a story. Why not use every tool available to tell that story better than you could have a decade ago. Why not tell that story better than your competitors do.

Learn how to use images, video, design, social media, and 100 other things to reach your goal. The objective is not to spread yourself thin, dabbling in a sea of new possibilities – but instead to realize that your toolbox is bigger than it once was. Like an expert craftsman, selecting the right tool is an essential part of getting to the finished product.

This is not about “multimedia,” and not about “social media,” it is about telling a story, and solving a need.
Make New Friends

Being a part of a tight-knit community is one of the joys of many people’s daily work life, and certainly one of the joys of working in niche B2B markets. But every now and again, step outside of that comfort zone, and try to make new friends: friends that will challenge you, think differently than you, walk differently than you, and see the world differently than you.

When you stay within a tight group, everyone’s roles become so cast in stone, behaviors so predictable, that we end up reenacting the same dance, day in, day out. It’s a good dance, but a new one every now and again can help you see your role, and how you execute on your goals, in new ways.

Likely, you have colleagues within your brand that you largely rarely speak to. Stop that. Maybe you sit near folks at a sister publication, that you politely say hello to, but nothing more. Stop that. Maybe you keep meaning to go to industry meetings that are 15 minutes away, but find other things to do. Stop that. Maybe your wife’s friend’s husband works in a related industry to you, but you never made the effort to reach out. Stop that too.

Cross-pollinating ideas and viewpoints is what leads to break-throughs. When you don’t do that, you have left a gap in your market for someone else to step in and find that innovation – that solution – that pushes their business ahead of yours.
Speak Up, But Only if You are Helping

In journalism and media, there is no shortage of loud voices. But ask yourself – how often are these loud voices complaining about a problem, but lending no hand in offering a solution. I understand what it is to be a jaded New Yorker – to not just follow blindly along with every sunny idea. But being a dissenter does not mean that you know better. After awhile, it becomes easy to see the downside of everything, to not support any idea, for fear that it will fail and you will look foolish.

This can pertain to so many areas: from internal processes, to industry changes, technological capabilities, co-workers and organization structures, to thousands of issues relating to print vs. web.

People are looking for solutions, not problems. Be that solution.
Put Yourself in the Line of Fire.

I used this quote back in January: “If you don’t stand for something, you stand for nothing.” We are in times of incredible transition – do you want to stand on the sideline as others shape the future? Do you want to let your future happen TO you – the result of other people’s decisions? Or do you want to take a step outside of your comfort zone, and be a contributor, not a detractor or wallflower – someone who is willing to look beyond the usual limits to find solutions that your business desperately needs.

I don’t say this to add risk to your career. I say this because the economy has proven that all jobs are at risk – that companies are constantly reassessing what “essential” means as we all experience unprecedented shifts in consumer behavior, business models, and huge economic structures that we have relied on.

If you aren’t close to the line of fire, then perhaps you need to move closer to the action, where your colleagues and business need your help the most.

Will all of these tips hold water for you? Nope, probably not. But taking a more active role in managing your career while you are still gainfully employed will have an exponentially greater affect than if you only think about these issues once you have experienced a “career transition,” as many of our friends and family are now coping with.

The great part about this is that it is not at all selfish – the biggest beneficiary is your company, and helping to meet their goals.

The ROI of Journalists and Magazines Using Twitter

Dan Blank — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:41:31 +0000

Here at Reed Business Information, many brands and editors have drank the Twitter Kool-Aid. Now we have to figure out something important:

Is this worth our time and effort?

Journalists, marketers and other folks at RBI are incredibly busy people. If they are using Twitter, what is the return on investment for their time and effort?

I decided to take a peak behind the curtains at one brand to see what all their Twittering has brought them. Let’s get this started:

The brand: School Library Journal
Timeframe measured: January 2009
Twitter Updates in January: 277
Started on Twitter: August 5, 2008

That’s a lot of updates, right?! So, at the most basic level, how much exposure did this bring to School Library Journal. It’s a difficult metric to pinpoint for a variety of reasons* (see more about metrics below), but a conservative estimate is:

A few thousand page views.

Let’s correlate Twitter updates to page views:

Some of these spikes align to big news items: coverage of the inauguration, a huge book awards event, and the tragic deaths of two librarians.

The anatomy of SLJ’s Tweets:

109 Internal Links
This is 39% of their updates, a huge number considering it includes some @replies and live reporting from events. Note: many internal links use URL shorteners like http://ow.ly or http://tinyurl.com.
47 External Links
This includes links within @Replies. Overall, 56% of their Tweets had some kind of link in it.
41 @Replies
This is 15% of their updates. I would imagine this number will grow considerably as the Twitter platform evolves as a communication channel.
28 ReTweets
These account for 10% of their updates. “ReTweeting” is when you send out someone else’s Twitter updates to your followers. Usually, you include the letters “RT” and the person’s Twitter handle as well. EG: “RT @DanBlank”
1 #Hashtag
I was sort of surprised by this – I thought that there would have been more of these set up around the book events, and for the inauguration. Kathy Ishizuka at SLJ said that her readers don’t yet use hash tags much, so SLJ uses them where appropriate, but not too much just yet.

Types of Tweets:

Reporting News
- Live reporting: During a closely watched awards ceremony, SLJ provided play-by-play coverage of the announcements. In a two-hour period, they had 27 updates on Twitter, giving comprehensive reporting as it happened. Later on, they linked to the story they posted, as well as that of their sister publication, Publishers Weekly.
- Breaking News: Two librarians, on their way home from the event mentioned above, were killed in a car accident. SLJ was able to share the news on Twitter before their article was written, linking to it later on. This is also an example of how readers want to engage with each other on a certain topic, even after they have read all the facts. Twitter is a channel for these conversations.
- Sharing links via ReTweets or external links.
Promoting Our Articles/Blogs/Content
- Obviously, this is a big part of how brands think about leveraging Twitter. It is important to remember balance, and to think of the needs of the readers. If you are just sending out 20 links to your own stuff each day, and not interacting with your community more, you might find a less engaged audience. Twitter is more than just another broadcasting channel.
@ Replies and connecting directly with members of the community/industry
- A core benefit of Twitter is when a member of the community replies directly to SLJ, or vice versa. What’s more – it is done in the open, where anyone else can see and join in. Just think of how this differs from email, where the discussions are hidden and private, never going viral or taking on a life of there own – never able to find serendipitous moments as others find connections in the conversation. Email takes up a huge portion of many editor’s time, and yet is not measured in “page views” like Twitter is. It’s a really interesting comparison of which brings the biggest ROI.
- Some Tweets give a behind the scenes glimpse of life at SLJ. One example is when SLJ mentioned on Twitter that they are about to interview author Neil Gaiman for an upcoming issue of the magazine. SLJ’s followers are book lovers – so this was of incredible interest to them.

Now, are these metrics good? Sure, they’re good. Are they great? Who knows, but we are seeing Twitter take off VERY quickly. This could be just the start of something huge. But wait, aren’t there other benefits of Twitter? Sure:

Engaging the Top 10% of Your Audience
In SLJ’s case, they have noticed that many of their followers are prominent and influential people in their industry. This is a powerful relationship to establish. It increases the likelihood of these people writing about you more often in their blogs, and sending links your way in Twitter. If you aren’t active on Twitter, that means you have essentially opted out of these connections.
Twitter also gives you more opportunities to connect your industry with these thought-leaders. It is about more than just sending traffic to us or away from us; it is about creating a community that helps each other. Twitter builds trust.
Improving Editorial
Again and again, journalists tell me that they use Twitter to keep their fingers on the pulse of what is happening in their industry, and discovering the issues that people are talking about most.
Many hot or controversial topics form very quickly – perhaps before you have a chance to write an article or research it thoroughly. Leveraging Twitter puts you at the forefront of these conversations, and can be a great way to get feedback about the particular topic. I have seen quite a few articles created by asking a question on Twitter, then aggregating those replies into an article.

Listening to your industry via Twitter gives ideas for the content that they should be focusing on, and by actively engaging with this network of people, helps bring readers more deeply into your brand.

Using Twitter to report live from an event is gives you a new tool in your toolbox. This process could be improved by marrying it with deeper updates on the website, and then using Twitter to push traffic to the deeper content. For instance: if one editor gives Twitter updates, another could be taking and sending photos to a blog or article page. This page can grow as other editors add photos and depth to the 140 character Tweets.
Marketing across more networks
Being active on Twitter means that SLJ’s brand and expertise are findable on more networks. The image above is incredibly compelling – it shows SLJ’s readers sharing links to their stories, talking about their brand, and in conversation with them.

Overall, I think there is a strong case here for proving the value of Twitter. What is important to notice here is how rich School Library Journal’s Twitter updates are. They are full of links, replies to members of their community, and promoting of the best content from other Twitterers they follow.

What’s more, this is a network that is full of potential. Likely, it is just getting started, so I hope to see these metrics improve in the coming months.

Here are a few ideas to help expand your Twitter network:

Let your readers know you are on Twitter. In your newsletters, articles, and in your email signature.
Explain the value of Twitter – how this allows connections to your brand and other thought-leaders in your industry.
Ask your readers to become a bigger part of their brand by asking them important questions that you will use within your magazine and online articles or blogs.

How to manage Twitter with your competing responsibilities.
Likely, you have a ton of work on your plate. If you are an editor, you are responsible for researching articles, writing articles, creating blog entries, tagging content, uploading images, learning video, finding links, and a hundred other things in a given day.

When approaching Twitter, the key question is how much effort do we put towards leveraging it, and what are the best tactics to do so. How can you get started on Twitter without it having an adverse affect on your other tasks? Some ideas:

Create boundaries
Identify how you want to leverage the medium, and then put some boundaries on it. It is better to start out slow and consistent, rather than jump in with both feet, only to sour on it after two weeks.
For example: you might want to ensure you send out one internal link a day, and one note as to what your brand is working on or most excited about. You can always add to this, but at least your early followers will know what to expect from you, and hear from you often, but not too much.
Identify specific times to Twitter
I find that it can be fun to Twitter “in the moment,” but for some, that can be another pressure of always thinking of something to communicate. So to start, focus on updating at times where your audience is most likely to be engaged. Maybe you will send a morning update with news, a question during lunch, and any @relies at the end of the day. Don’t overwhelm yourself.
Focus on your goals
If you are hoping to drive traffic back to your website, focus on articles, questions and other content that are most likely to do this. Be very selective about what links you share and questions you ask. You can also take a break after a week or two to measure your Twitter stats, carefully analyzing what’s working and what isn’t.

Here are three Twitter analytics tools you can leverage: Twitterholic, TweetStats, and Web Analytics Demystified.
Organize who updates your brand’s Twitter account
SLJ’s Kathy Ishizuka says that followers tend to notice when different people update a Twitter feed. Even in 140 characters, there is a change in voice and style. Not sure of the best practice here, but consider what works best for your team. Perhaps several people need to shoulder the load. Or maybe one person is in a better position to easily Tweet about your content.
Make Twitter a part of your existing processes
Don’t think of Twitter as something separate – just another of a 100 things you have to do. Use it to strengthen things you are already working on. Ask questions of those who follow you – find out how your readers can help you.

I’ve always loved how JCK’s Rob Bates uses his blog as a part of his reporting process for deeper articles on JCK’s website and in there magazine. You can think about Twitter in the same way – as a way to increase the success and influence of the things you are already doing.

Overall – there are a variety of ways to think about the ROI of Twitter. One important thing to remember is that this is a medium that is still forming. Josh Hadro at Library Journal told me how they were Twittering away for months with a few hundred followers, and then suddenly jumped to well over a thousand followers recently. If you can establish yourself on Twitter in smart ways, using it to further the goals of your brand, you might find some nice rewards for doing so. But of course, the best reward is knowing that you are helping your readers and industry – furthering THEIR goals.

I’ll leave you with my favorite Tweet from School Library Journal:

Today’s lesson: Don’t Tweet before coffee. Drinking now.
8:37 AM Jan 23rd

(Thanks so much to Kathy Ishizuka, Brian Kenney, Josh Hadro and the many others who shared their Twitter experiences with me!)

*Missing Metrics

To identify the amount of traffic driven to School Library Journal from Twitter, I calculated referrer traffic from Twitter.com and three URL shortening services: ow.ly, tinyurl.com, and is.gd. This does not capture any traffic delivered by full SchoolLibraryJournal.com links that were in some Tweets.

Here is some more info as to why it is difficult to capture 100% of the metrics for Twitter traffic. The information below is an excerpt from an article on Twitip.com

Lack of Referer header for traffic from other Twitter clients. Desktop- and phone-based Twitter clients are popular. According to TweetStats, web accounts for about 51% of the whole Twitter apps, so where do the stats for the 49% go?. When someone clicks on your link, it will not carry the Referer header. Your log file and web stats are more likely to track this as direct traffic.
Syndicated Twitter feed displays the wrong Referer information. As Twitter also has RSS feed, web publishers can syndicate it easily on their web sites, blogs, FriendFeed or even Facebook accounts. When someone clicks on the link in the tweet, the header contains a Referer line, but from the other web sites instead of Twitter.
It doesn’t track traffic from RSS feed. If your followers decide to follow via RSS in their news readers, or if they subscribe to a keyword-search query via RSS, and then happen to click on the link in the tweet, it will be tracked as either direct traffic — if from a desktop RSS reader, or as traffic from online RSS reader in the Referer line.

Give and You Will Receive: Finding Solutions Through Collaboration.

Dan Blank — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:42:55 +0000

New media and the internet have made it essential to break down barriers between your brand and your audience. Today I want to talk about breaking down barriers between employees within the same company, and how this can help your business and career. First, a story about The Clash, who are not quoted nearly enough in business books:

“About 200 people showed up at the Paramount in Seattle to see this gig and it was, simply put, mind-blowing. During the show, a big yellow-shirted security guy up front punched a fan and broke his nose. Blood was everywhere. The Clash stopped the show.”

“Bassist Paul Simonen appeared from the wings of stage right wielding a firefighter’s axe that he must have plucked from the wall. He jumped down in the pit and proceeded to chop down the wooden barrier separating the fans from the band while guitarist Joe Strummer dressed down the security gorilla and went on further to say that there was no difference between the fans and the bands…”

“We are all in this together! There is no such thing as a Rock Star, just musicians and listeners!”

Publishers are all looking for solutions. They are working harder and harder, with fewer and fewer resources to find growth in a challenging economy. And yet, in many cases, the clues to these puzzles are all around them – in the cubes and offices in their building, or their email and phone directories. You are surrounded by experts trying to solve the same problems you are.

We need to break down that cube wall between co-workers from other brands, other departments, other roles, and other places.

We are indeed, all in this together.

So here are some ideas to help you connect with those ideas, those solutions, those experts, with those folks stuffed into little gray cubes waiting for a friendly face to brighten their day.

Create User Groups

Peter Welander and I were chatting about how to truly help others within RBI with their efforts to create high quality video for their websites.

We batted around ideas like sharing links to articles and that type of thing, but came to the conclusion that links are not the answer. People need help, and the only way to do that is to sit down with them, understand their problem, share ideas, and focus on real-world, real-time solutions – not theory or debates So we came up with the idea of creating a user group – simply asking all the folks who work on creating video within RBI to meet, chat, and solve.

Peter brought the idea to an Oak Brook editorial meeting (in itself, a great concept), and the group thought the idea had merit. 20 people have signed up so far!

You might be surprised at how others in the company are approaching the same tasks that you are. Don’t suffer alone as you try to create a webcast strategy, work on lead generation, use web publishing tools, get started on social networking, learn SEO, or try to figure out the coffee maker in the kitchen.

The goal is not to fill your day with company meetings – but to find immediate and measurable changes in business.
Connect & Follow

Follow co-workers on Twitter. Connect with them on LinkedIn and perhaps even on Facebook. Read their websites – look deeply at their products. If they have webcasts, why not sign up for one. Get a newsletter or two. Go on vacation with them. Okay, that might be a bit too far. The point is: you are surrounded by interesting people who have a stake in your success, and you in theirs.

Reach across the aisle. Show them you care.

I am constantly amazed at what you can learn by doing this. That people in finance care about IT; and people in IT care about social networks; and lawyers care about blog strategy; and editors care about graphic design. These are all connections waiting to happen.

In the past two weeks, a ton of other RBI brands and editors have started Twittering. Here’s a piece of my RBI Twitter directory, which is growing every day:

Kids Today
Playthings
BuyerZone
Furniture Today
Publishers Weekly
Foodservice Equipment & Supplies
Home Accents Today
HOTELS

And plenty of your coworkers are joining Twitter:
Jeff Weinstein from HOTELS
Susan Dickenson from Home Accents Today
Jenny Heinzen York from Home Accents Today
Ray Allegrezza from Furniture Today
Dana French from FT and HAT
Cinde Ingram from Casual Living

My Twitter article from Jan 30 has a list of more Twittering RBI brands and staffers too.
Share Information and Data

Look at your web metrics. Set goals and measure results. Do this often. The next step is the tricky part – share this data. This helps to understand if your expectations are warranted, and will help create benchmarking data, which can be hard to come by.

Let’s say three brands – let’s pick School Library Journal, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly – begin sharing a few key web performance metrics that are aligned to strategies they are testing out – think about how much more powerful that information is when you see it across three brands, three audiences, and perhaps three ways of implementing the same strategy.

Or, if something surprises you as you comb through your own performance data, why not share that. Did you notice that you received a huge amount of traffic when you wrote an article on a particular topic – why not share that information with a sister publication?

Likewise, if you do something else to market your content, or improve SEO, use images or videos, etc – if something works, share it. If something doesn’t work, share that too. Our failures can be our biggest lessons. Don’t fail in isolation. Prevent others from going down those dead end paths.
Invest $30 in Your Career

You are surrounded by passionate experts who are trying to solve the same problems that you are. Sure, their industry might be different, their role might be different, or perhaps they part their hair on the opposite side of the head as you do. But you should be talking to these people. You should be helping these people. And you should be learning from these people. My advice:

Take your co-workers out to lunch.

People you don’t normally talk to. People you see just once a day in the kitchen. People above you on the food chain and people below you on the food chain. They are full of ideas, full of wisdom, and thanks to you, they could be full of food.

There is so much talk about spending money to stimulate the economy. This is a sure-fire way to not just support local restaurants, but also invest in your goal and your future. Learn something new, help someone, and who knows, maybe they will be able to help you one day.

2009 will not be an easy year. For your brand to thrive, you need to get even closer to your customers and audience. And for you to thrive with fewer resources than you would like, you need to break down that cube wall between you and co-workers.

I’ll bookend this post with another photo of The Clash. Heather McCormack calls this shot their “classic three-pronged attack.” This is indeed a band firing on all cylinders. Businesses should strive to achieve such a moment:

Rethinking Online Editorial Strategy

Dan Blank — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:56:15 +0000

A few weeks back, I shared a case study about how the staff of Library Journal put a strategy behind the rollout of a big feature on the web, and saw amazing results compared to the previous year. The team just took another step down that road, this time with a big November feature, which is part of their yearly Reference Supplement. So I just wanted to share some lessons from the past couple of weeks.

What they did:

Began strategizing about the online treatment of the article weeks before it was to launch.
Involved several editors, the art director and web folks in quick brainstorming meetings to get some ideas on the table and keep everyone on the same page.
Identified ways to break up the article into meaningful chunks. This year’s supplement had 24 web pages, compared to 9 last year.
Talked with members of our online and print-to-web production teams. The goal was to work web strategy into existing processes that we have so that no one is reinventing the wheel here.
Had the web operations team create a landing page to act as the centerpiece of the article. A big goal this time around was to ensure we leverage existing templates.
Began tweaking the format for individual pages – creating images to capture the readers’ attention, format the many charts in ways that are easy to read, and inserting navigational links where needed. These 24 pages have to operate as a whole.
Once launched, LJ promoted it in newsletters, on the homepage, and in their blogs. They created house ads for it to run in print.
The main article reviewed a series of online services, so they created a logo that these brands can add to their site to show off that they were picked by LJ as a great resource. So this turns into more than just an article.

What happened within the first 2 weeks:

A 730% increase in page views, compared to the performance of last year’s Reference Supplement.
It received 60% more page views in the first 2 weeks, than the previous year’s supplement did in 12 months.
Over 30 other websites/blogs linked to it.

Why did all this happen?

Beyond all the activities mentioned above, the editor of the feature actively marketed it to interested parties: she emailed her many reviewers and reference contacts. When they gave feedback via email, she asked them to leave the feedback on the web too, so that everyone could see it and she could use that list as a starting place to make improvements. Every week since publication, she has been thinking of new ways to extend the reach of the article, and identify ways to make it better.
Tracking web metrics. While the team is looking at the stats on how many page views the article is receiving, it goes beyond just about seeing “how we did.” This information is a tool to understand what is working, what isn’t, and where the opportunities for improvement lie. Some of these lessons will be used to tweak this article – but others will be used in the next big feature LJ puts together.
They are keeping track of who mentions the article, and who links to them from other websites. These are the people who are core to their audience – who have taken it upon themselves to spread LJ’s message. The editor has reached out to some of them to thank them for their efforts, and will be continuing this.
Other Library Journal bloggers (who are not on staff) were made aware of the article, and some of them covered it in their blogs as well. This type of communication is often assumed – that your other bloggers will be aware of the article, and they will link to it if they want. But you can’t assume that – it is so much more valuable to bring them into the fold and involve them in the process. These external contributors want nothing more than to be more deeply involved with your brand.

Next steps for this particular feature:

The editor is planning on doing updates to this feature, starting in early 2009. She will be expanding to new categories and adding details to existing ones. If you track how our articles perform online, you would typically have a graph that starts out high on the left, and goes steeply down from there. The whole “long tail” thing. Creating bumps along the way, via important updates, can have a dramatic affect on how relevant this is to your readers, and on its overall performance. A living breathing resource, with constant updates.
This feature will continue to be marketed, in both its existing form, and when the quarterly updates are made.

So sure, there are a lot of tactics in here, but to a degree, the tactics are besides the point. What is important here is the cultural shift in the way editorial is evolving their online strategy:

HAVING a Strategy.
Meeting weeks ahead of time and brainstorming how this feature fits into their entire system, and how it can be tweaked again and again to make it better in terms of both content and marketing. Right now, we are mapping out features like this for their 2009 editorial calendar.
Measuring Performance & Leveraging Web Analytics.
Looking at the web metrics is about one thing: your readers and better understanding their behavior and needs. This information should be used in an active manner, driving decisions. The real-time nature of web analytics offers powerful opportunities.
Setting Goals.
How big can this feature be? How far can it spread beyond your own site? How many page views should your print edition get when it moves to the web? These are questions I don’t often see people asking, but are essential to realize the potential of where our brands can be online.
Marketing Content, Not Just Creating It.
We can no longer assume that the content will just spread on its own – building connections and a real online community is about more than just adding a “Digg” button to an article. Part of this is the concept of partnering with your competitors, instead of treating them as the enemy. These 30 other blogs & websites that are spreading the word on this featurea are, in some ways, Library Journal’s biggest fans.

The main thing is that THIS FEATURE WASN’T JUST KICKED OUT OF THE NEST. Simply throwing print content online is not enough. The Library Journal team is doing as much work after the article was posted as they did to create it.

So let’s take this a step further…

What if Library Journal was able to see this kind of success with one article a month, or two, or three, or four? What if 730% increases in page views was common the first year out with this? What if they got 30, or 60, or 90 other websites to link to each piece of their content? What would all this mean? Among other things, it would mean:

That their brand is at the center of the ONLINE community in the library world.
That they have made that massive leap from “traditional media” to “new media” with astounding success.
That they are the same people they have always been, with the same mission, yet operating in new ways, in a radically different world.

But most importantly, it means that they are making librarians smile. And that is the best goal of all.

(A HUGE thanks to the folks over at Library Journal, RB Interactive and the Content Production team for their work and enthusiasm on this project.)

Giving Thanks for New Media

Dan Blank — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:59:12 +0000

I attended an event for the author Malcolm Gladwell, where he gave a chat and did a book signing. I found the entire experience fascinating.

I arrived nearly 2 hours early to get a good seat up front, and I was not alone. He spoke about his new book, Outliers, and some of the secrets to success. He’s an engaging storyteller, even if his data is sometimes questionable.

After his stories, audience members were allowed to ask questions, and this was really interesting to me. We were given permission to ask a set number of questions – to have direct access to the author.

For in-person events, this is considered a rare opportunity. But online, this is common, and to a degree, expected.

In responding to a particular publication or writer, you can “comment” on a story; email writers directly; publish a reaction on your own blog; or publish a reaction on a social network, such as YouTube. These ideas were once revolutionary, segmented to the “letters to the editor” page or rare in-person events like this. Now, it is simply assumed. What has happened is that communication structures have changed, and to a surprising degree, power has shifted.

I had my book signed after the event, but wasn’t sure why. I don’t place any value on signatures, but felt obligated since I was there, partaking in this “rare” opportunity. After I got my book signed, I sat back and watched others do the same. What is it that drives us to wait in line and have a journalist – an author – touch their book? To mark it with ink? What meaning does this have for us? Is it simply the “collector” nature we have in this country, or is it something deeper? Does this bring us closer to the ideas that inspired us in this book?

Taking a step even further back, to take in this crowd that gathered, in this enormous Barnes & Noble in Union Square, what is all this? A public square? A place to pay homage to books – to history – to community? Who knows. But here are some things I do know…

You are seeing the space between journalists, authors and their audiences shrink. We are now part of the same crowd, each empowered to take turns on the stage, or to do away with the stage completely.

And yet, this does not diminish the value of journalists, of writers, of thought-leaders, or of innovators.

Our underlying values haven’t changed, but the way we interact has. We gather, in person and online, to share, to find inspiration, to spread our wings, to come together, to pull apart, to learn, to escape, to journey and to find.

Media is changing. Magazines and publishing are changing. Journalism is changing. Communication is changing. Our culture is changing. And yet, wherever you go, there you are.

None of these things should instill fear. The creation of one element does not require the destruction of another. We are simply finding new ways to do the same things that have always mattered to us.

For all the changes, people like me still buy Malcolm’s book, still show up two hours early to see him speak, and still read the NY Times review of his book with far greater interest than we would a review on a social network.

In the end, what I like most about new media, is how it empowers us to do more TOGETHER, than alone.

And for that, I am thankful.

Multimedia Tips: Recording Audio Off the Phone

Dan Blank — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:37:27 +0000

Guest column by Peter Welander, Control Engineering process industries editor.

This column is intended to help provide technical advice for editors with the hopes of creating improved audio quality in podcasts, videos, and other online products. Please send your questions.

Since it isn’t always convenient to record a podcast face-to-face, sometimes we have to depend on recording from the phone to get the audio we need to complete a project.

The conventional wisdom is to use one of our conference calling platforms and have it do the recording for us. This works reasonably well assuming you can plan ahead a bit and don’t mind waiting for the company to send you a CD of the recording. (BTW, if you do that, order a .WAV file for best sound quality.) The downside of this is that it does require some planning ahead and everyone on the conversation sounds like they’re on the phone.

(I confess that I have a certain predisposition to technical geekishness, so bear in mind that I may come up with a more complex suggestion than you may want to deal with. I am aware of the problem and do attempt consciously to counteract it. Let me know if I am getting carried away. Whenever possible, I will provide links to where you can buy what I talk about. The two main suppliers will be B&H and Radio Shack because of their universality, but others can work just as well.)

The alternative is to use a small recorder and simply place it near a speaker phone. This may get you intelligible speech, but probably not something with high enough audio quality to use for a podcast.

There are techniques for recording off the phone that are not all that complicated and can yield decent sound. What you need is a simple device known as a phone interface. One such device that is relatively simple is a QuickTap made by JK Audio. This model sells for $58.95 at B&H. (There are cheaper units available, such as one from Radio Shack. I bought one and the sound was terrible. Don’t waste your time.)

All you have to do to install this interface is unplug the handset from your phone and put this in between the normal connection. Once in place, you can forget about it and use your phone normally. If you’re not recording, it does not interfere with regular operation. One caution though, it does not work if the keypad is in the handset.

There is a socket on the side of the unit for the audio output. It’s a mini-mono, mic level output. (If you know what that means, you’ll know how to use it. If not, read on.) What you need is a patch cord to plug into your recorder. This is where things can get complicated.

If you’re using a typical small digital recorder, there is probably a jack for an external mic input. Most of these will be “mini” plug size, which is 1/8” in diameter like the headphone jack on your computer and the plug on most lightweight headphones and ear buds. Small recorders are virtually all stereo, so it is probably designed for a stereo microphone. Since the audio from the interface is mono, you simply send the same signal to both sides of the stereo. That’s simple enough, but the patch cords sent with the interface won’t help you.

Here’s why: The photo shows the difference between a mono and stereo plug. They aren’t compatible. Sure, you can plug either into the same socket, but the electrical connections aren’t the same. So to connect the two incompatible sources, you need a patch cord and an adapter. A mini stereo-to-stereo patch cord is very common and used for things like computer speakers, etc. They are easy to find at Radio Shack and other electronics stores. You may even have one lying around. The adapter is less common. You need a stereo female by mono male adapter which is also available from Radio Shack. (My local store had both in stock.) The adapter goes into the interface, and the cord to the recorder.

Once you’re connected, it will take some experimentation to find the right sound balance. If your recorder has a mic sensitivity adjustment, you will probably need to set it to low, or for use in louder environments. The signal from the interface is relatively strong. You may not have a lot of control over the volume difference between you and your caller. That is one element that may have to be fixed in post production.

So, you ask yourself, “Why shouldn’t I just use the conference recording service? All that sounds like a lot of trouble.” Often that may be an easier answer, certainly. On the other hand, having the ability to record with decent audio quality anytime you want can be very handy. The device can be setup all the time, and when there’s an opportunity, all you have to do is plug in the recorder and go. That can be very helpful when you finally reach that contact you have been stalking, or there is an unexpected opportunity. Sometimes planning ahead isn’t possible, and this helps fill in those gaps.

There are more sophisticated phone interfaces available if you want to try more advanced recording techniques. (That will be a topic for a future discussion.) If you want to see what’s possible, listen to a few minutes of this podcast that was recorded off the phone at my cubicle using a phone interface.