You might remember some time ago I wrote about an offer from Autosport magazine that I received by email, where I got a free trial issue of the magazine, and then six issues for £1 total, before reverting to a standard-priced subscription.
Well, I’ve now had two issues of the magazine and they are very good indeed. I will be keeping my subscription going.
Conclusion: if your magazine is exceptional, then a targeted free-issue offer is likely to work well.
Here are five different ways people are using Twitter that you might find useful for your business:
1. Links to your articles
This type of feed just provides a link every time you post a new article. It can be automatically created by your content management software.
Benefit: it alerts followers when there’s something new to be read.
Drawback: it can get monotonous, and gets less effective if you publish too often.
Example: @guardiantech – The Guardian’s technology feed.
Interesting links to other sites
Rather than linking to your own articles, you can aim to be an interesting source of links to other information.
Benefit: a useful community service that casts you as a source for news, helps to build your brand.
Drawback: doesn’t engage people directly with your own products, services and information.
Example: @smashingmag – Smashing Magazine – An online magazine for designers and developers.
Customer support
You can set up searches on Twitter to find customers who mention your product and are having problems. You can then respond. For example, I posted a message saying that I was having trouble purchasing an image from iStockPhoto.com. A representative of the company then contacted me to get in touch. (Actually, I’m not sure if he was an employee or just a member of the community offering support.)
Benefit: rapid alerts if something goes wrong, and a quick chance to provide good customer support.
Drawback: time-consuming, reactive rather than proactive.
Example: @rackspace – the Rackspace hosting company.
Behind the scenes
Here, you tweet about what’s really going on in the company. Sometimes this is done under the name of the person, rather than the company itself.
Benefit: Personalises the brand and shows that there’s real people involved.
Drawback: only one person’s view, can appear unprofessional if not done well.
Examples: @krishgm – Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy. @NobleF1 – Autosport F1 Editor Jon Noble.
Supplying content
Sometimes you can put snippets of fully-formed content on Twitter. @VizTopTips publishes very short pieces of content exactly as they would appear in the magazine in their short Top Tips column.
Benefit: readers can experience your unique information and discover (or be reminded) how good it is.
Drawback: content must be good and relevant.
A report by Continental Research, covered in the Guardian here,
argues that micropayment systems would be more palatable to consumers than monthly or annual subscription systems.
Apparently “When it came to micropayments, 35% of respondents said they would be prepared to pay 2p per article, 22% would pay 5p, 13% 10p and just 6% 20p for each piece of online content.”
Even at 2p per article, that’s a CPM rate of £20, which is more than most sites can charge for ads! It almost sounds too good to be true!
Over the last few years a plethora of different surveys have reached very different conclusions about micropayments (maybe a case of “He who pays the piper calls the tune”).
I’ve been involved with the internet since about 1993, and I can remember talk of micropayments going back as far as the year dot. So how come we’ve had 15 years and micropayments still haven’t taken off?
The fundamental issue here is one of psychology. It’s covered well in the book Free, by Chris Anderson.
If you pay a subscription, you only have to think about it once. After that, all your access appears free. If you use micropayments, every time you want to access an article your brain has to ask itself “Is it worth it?”. That’s the extra cognitive step that leads to trouble.
You might argue that mobile phones successfully use a Pay As You Go model, which is similar to micropayments for articles. So what’s the difference? Probably there are several. First, phone calls have never been free, so there’s no expectation that they should be. Second, perhaps people value the human interaction of a phone call more highly than reading an article, so they’re more willing to pay. Third, you only have to pay your phone bill to one company, whereas with micropayments you wouldn’t want to set up a new account with every provider.
But doesn’t Apple effectively use micropayments for the apps in its iPhone app store? Yes, it does. And similar to the Pay As You Go phone model above, it works for two reasons. One: users have been conditioned that apps were never solely free. Two: you always pay the bill to Apple, very easily, through an existing account that you’ve already created.
So what’s the bottom line? If there’s any hope for micropayments, there needs to be one single micropayment system that covers the vast majority of sites. Maybe the publishing industry just needs to get together and agree a standard system. Then we’ll finally see if the survey respondents who say they’d use micropayments will put their money where their mouth is! I’m not holding my breath.
You probably think of the text and images that go into your magazine, or onto your website, as “content”. As a publisher, you might think you’re selling “content”. But content is a dirty word, and here’s why:
Imagine two articles on Formula 1 motor racing. One is written by Murray Walker, a commentating legend who did his first racing commentary in 1948, and has met, interviewed and personally known almost every great driver and champion in the sport. The other article is by an anonymous hack, cobbling together wire copy without personal insight and probably without personal interest in the sport. These are both “content”. But which would you rather read?
The problem with thinking in terms of “content” is that content is a commodity. Everybody has “content”. Publishers would do better to think of themselves as providing Branded Information. Maybe that’s the brand of the magazine, or the brand of the contributor.
Two main ways of providing branded information spring to mind. Either look at the message, or look at how it is delivered.
A distinctive message: The Economist doesn’t provide “content”, it provides analysis and comment which you know will be rooted in facts, statistics and quality writing. It’s distinctive. It’s not a commodity. It’s Branded Information.
A distinctive delivery: Jim Cramer, of CNBC’s financial show Mad Money, gained a big reputation for his presentation style: shouting, ranting and being larger than life. In his case the quality of the information he presented was arguably sometimes lacking (especially with the benefit of hindsight), but he didn’t just provide facts and comment, he entertained the audience. It’s distinctive. It’s not a commodity. It’s Branded Information.
It’s a waste of time to develop commodity content, because it fetches commodity prices. And on the web, the commodity price of content is almost zero. But as the Financial Times has shown, both online and in print, people will pay good money for Branded Information.
I’m currently listening to the audiobook of “Free”, by Chris Anderson. For people who work in publishing, there’s a lot of interesting things that are worth considering. I’ll write more on this when I’ve finished the book – you can get your own free electronic copy of “Free” here, either as text or audio.
Also, for those who aren’t so keen on Google or the idea of free publishing, there’s an amusing short article here entitled Sergey Brin Doesn’t Understand How Book Publishing Works, complete with disparaging funny picture.
This list of 50 ideas on using Twitter for Business, by Chris Brogan, should get magazine publishers started with thinking how they might use Twitter to build their reader communities.
Affinity deals are an arrangement between a magazine and a company to promote a product or service in a more creative way than simply running an advertisement. The magazine often benefits by being able to offer more benefits to its readers and subscribers.
Here are a few ideas for affinity deals:
We’ll have more updates on the blog in the future showing you how to find potential affinity partners.
If you had five dollars and two hours, what would you do to make as much money as possible?
There’s a six minute video from the Stanford technology venture program that asks this question, and gives three interesting solutions. One team pumped up bicycle tyres, another made reservations in restaurants that had lengthy queues and then sold their place, and the winner… well, you’ll have to watch the video!
So how is this applicable to magazine publishing?
The students who made the most money were the ones who were able to adapt. They saw a new challenge and knew they couldn’t afford to be limited by what they’d done in the past. In some senses, having no cash helped them find the creative spark they needed. They realised they had their own skills, and a three-minute presentation in the classroom at the end. They worked with what they’d got.
These are the sorts of people we think our new advertising barter exchange will appeal to. You’ve got a magazine that people read. You’ve got unsold pages. Why not barter them with other magazines and promote each other? Free promotion that benefits everyone.
Magazine publishers can sign up to ContraSwap today, free of charge.
As publishers begin to use online tools such as their website, Facebook and Twitter to interact more with their users, effective strategies to engage readers are starting to emerge.
One interesting approach is to think of publishing as being a soap opera. Three key features of a soap are characters, ongoing storylines and cliff-hangers. Let’s look at some examples of how these concepts can be used for engaging a magazine’s readers effectively online.
Characters
Characters are a chance to personalise a reader’s relationship with the magazine. For example, Autosport’s Group F1 Editor, Jon Noble, reports his exploits as he travels to each race using the Twitter account NobleF1. This gives readers a more personal insight into the topic – an insider’s view. This personal connection can strengthen the bond between reader and magazine, helping retention rates.
Ongoing storylines
Ongoing storylines in soap operas have people coming back to find out what’s happened. There’s usually both a big picture narrative, and lots of mini-issues going on.
In a reader community on Facebook, here’s an example of one of these mini-issues being used to strengthen ties. The magazine’s office receives a book to review. A status message is posted saying “We’ve got Book X for review. It looks great. Full story to follow.”. Later, a second message is posted with a short summary or review of the book (if the magazine recommends it). This message also includes a chance for readers to win the book. The competition question could be something that stimulates a debate on the topic covered in the book. This could provide interesting fodder for further articles, both online and in the magazine.
The final part of the story is when the competition winner is announced. This is important, to emphasise the benefits of reader interaction to the other readers, and to let them see that the giveaways are really happening and that everything is above board!
Cliff-hangers
Cliff-hangers are really a natural extension of ongoing storylines. They’re a way to make people come back for more. One example might be “We’ve just received a product into the office that could revolutionise our industry. See the full story tomorrow.”
Another type of cliff-hanger is to cover a topic in one article, and then promise a follow-up on one area of detail in the near future. You’ll see that I did that in my recent post about London Lite closing. If the original article is of interest, the follow-up probably will be too.
One final amusing example is of a recent video showing an SUV driving half-way over two parked cars, reversing, then leaving the scene! The implied cliff-hanger here is whether the police will catch the driver. If you can make it easy for people to check back later with you to see how the story ended, you’ve strengthened your tie with the reader and generated some extra traffic to your site.
Associated Newspapers plans to close its free evening newspaper London Lite, putting 36 jobs at risk. The Guardian has the full story here.
There are interesting lessons from these papers that magazines can learn from. I want to look at the two most important facts of any business: revenues and costs.
1. Revenues: Diverse revenue streams are vital – use affinity deals
Traditionally publishers make money from the cover price and from the ads. Take away the cover price and you’re relying solely on the ads.
Advertising is a notoriously cyclical business. It has booms and it has busts. The sad part is that everyone knows this, but few seem to plan for it! This chart showing ad sales across various media in the US, including newspapers and magazines, paints a sorry picture.
DMGT’s morning freesheet Metro made profits of £8m a year during the good times. It won’t be making that now! The challenge for a publisher relying solely on ads is two-fold: first to launch in the good times, and then to save up enough cash to ride out the bad times. For most companies this is too difficult.
The solution is to diversify revenue streams. This requires some creativity, and I think it’s an area where the industry as a whole can improve. The starting point is to see your readers as a community that share similar interests. Then its time to explore affinity deals, where the publication runs a joint offer with a company rather than a straightforward ad. This lessens the risk for the company, getting them involved when the cost of an ad would be too high for them. The publisher might not make as much money off each deal, but any revenue is better than none in hard times!
Looking at London Lite and The London Paper, much more could have been done in this area. We’ll have more to say on affinity deals in the near future.
2.Costs: Distribution costs are a major problem for publishers
When free London evening newspapers were first mooted, then-mayor Ken Livingstone tried to sell the contract for evening distribution on the tube. Both The London Paper and London Lite decided not to bid for this, and instead to employ a huge army of distributors to stand on the streets and give out the paper. This probably meant that both papers were living on borrowed time from the day they were born!
When you count the cost of printing each copy, getting it to a distribution person, paying his or her wages, paying for uniforms and equipment, the unit cost of each copy proved far higher than the price of the advertising that the copy carried.
To put it another way, due in part to high distribution costs each copy was produced at a loss. No business can sustain that for long.
So what should have happened? There were probably deals to be done in several ways.
A joint distribution deal could have been struck with London Underground, where the two papers could have agreed with each other to pay less for the deal and have both titles distributed side by side. Not ideal, but better than going bankrupt! (There’s a chance this sort of partnering could have fallen foul of competition laws though, since some might have deemed it a cartel.)
Deals could have been done with shops to give away the paper, either with standard newsagents or with other shops where the paper is given away at the point of purchase. Probably one of the big supermarkets would have considered this, but again short-term greed could have strangled the idea at birth.
It’s interesting to see that as yet the London Evening Standard, which went free in October, hasn’t done a tube deal or a deal with shops. Now that it’s the last man standing, I’d expect to see some of this happen fairly soon.
Summary: Lessons for magazines and other publishers
The lessons for magazines and other publishers are really these:
1. See your readers as a community, not just a passive audience to force ads onto. Try and serve them with creative affinity deals where the reader really wins.
2. If distribution costs are too high, look to more creative ways of reaching your audience. Could you partner with other companies to distribute your magazine, in return for either standard sales terms, some free ads, or some editorial coverage. Distribution could either be in shops, or given away with internet orders when they are posted.
3. Consider going internet-only. Printing costs are eliminated, distribution costs are reduced to near-zero. Of course, you then have a whole new challenge of working in the online world! We’ll have a lot more to say on that in the future!
