DCP Dialogue

Ready For Some Upbeat Marketing News, For A Change?

Are you tired of all the negative business reports from 2009? “Marketing budgets are slashed.” “Print is dead.” I’m sure you’ve heard them all.

Read these two brief articles for some very encouraging news regarding the record growth in the custom media business.

• Minonline: Custom Content Has Best Year Ever
• Publishing Executive: Custom Media Spend Rises to an All-time High

The bottom line is marketers invested more money in branded content in 2009 than ever before (two times as much as in 2008) and 51 percent of that money was used to create print publications, according to a recent survey.

So let’s celebrate the good news and look forward to a prosperous 2010.

The Ultimate Online Magazine Solution

As a marketing director, I’m well aware that you’re not supposed to plug your own company’s products on your blog. So please pardon me for breaking this rule but I really think you should take a look at a powerful new online magazine tool from DCP.

Over the years, we’ve provided our clients with different ways to publish their valuable print content on the Web. We started by offering a basic HTML version of their print publication that we call an ePub™.  Functional and inexpensive, this simple solution does a nice job of converting print content into an HTML-based online publication. But its templated approach doesn’t take full advantage of the design and interactive possibilities of the Web. While it replicates the print content, is doesn’t give clients the ability to extend it.

When the digital “flip-book” products gained popularity, DCP jumped on that trend. The good news with the digital magazine solution is that you preserve the beautiful layout of your print issue. The bad news is that it’s hard for your audience to read digital magazines because the print layout doesn’t translate well to a computer screen. The font is typically too small to read when viewing a full page, causing readers to have to constantly zoom in and out. Navigation is also a bit tedious. Clearly, this is not the most user-friendly solution.

DCP performed extensive research to find the best solution to bring a print publication to life online. WebExtra™, our new product, is a powerful, cost-effective online magazine tool that allows you to extend the reach and effectiveness of your magazine without spending an arm and a leg!

Some of the biggest advantages of WebExtra:

• With an easy-to-use Content Management System (CMS), you can regularly post fresh content — including articles, videos, slideshows, and audiocasts—that keep your audience engaged 24/7/365.
• Make your magazine a two-way conversation with your audience through article commenting and Ask the Expert features.
• Extend the content from your print edition by linking readers to relevant videos, podcasts, slideshows, etc.
• Promote news, events, or whatever you want in real time with WebExtra’s built-in event calendar that is highlighted on the home page.
• The custom designed feature stories look even better online than in print!
• This fully hosted solution presents no burden on your IT department and links seamlessly to your main website.

Take a look at the latest edition of WebExtra produced for UC Hastings College of the Law at magazine.uchastings.edu . Imagine what WebExtra can do for your print content!

Google Wave Preview

An interesting topic that's emerged on the blog the last few weeks is how a new host of Google tools can help editors and perhaps aspects of project management when it comes to publishing.

On Oct. 1, I sampled Google Voice and came away pretty impressed with features like voice mail transcription and easy call recording.

Today, I got a chance to take Google Wave for a spin when a friend invited me to take part in the preview. Based on a few early reports and impressive screen shots, I had high expectations for this latest goffering.

Granted, I only kicked the tires for about 15 minutes with three friends, but my first experience was a mixed bag.

The Social Network Gender Gap

Cool study last week from Information is Beautiful. Turns out that every night is ladies night when it comes to social networks, with a solid female majority at Facebook (57%), Twitter (57%) and myspace (64%).

The major networks with gender equality include YouTube and Linkedin. Digg (64%) was the only network skewing male.

Bonus totally informal and anecdotal aside: 75% of the 20 most recent entries on my Facebook feed were posted by women. Supporting evidence or excuse to social network at work, you decide!

Google Voice: Awesome editorial tool or another step in Google's world domination plot?

So I was excited to learn that Google has invited me into the Google Voice cabal. Google Voice is a phone service that combines any number of cell phone numbers and landlines under one phone number, calls to this phone number can be recorded and voice mails are kept online among a lot of other tools.

To try this out I gave Diablo's IT Director Alex Ackerman a call. We were both on cell phones. He shares my opinion that Google is taking over our lives one awesomely convenient communication app at a time.

Wave of the future

Any control freaks out there better be hydrated and in a well ventilated room when they check out this Atlantic business blog post about Google Wave. I don't want a project manager passing out on us.

So Google is going to "reinvent email" to include an interface that combines, well, pretty much any sort of online communication device man has invented as of 2009 A.D. Ambitious company that Google.

I could paraphrase Wave's coming amenities, but really the Atlantic does a great job. The one thing I want to pull out of this story, Google's prime directive when it first started designing the Wave:

The Google/Twitter Search-off

I'll admit that my perspective of Twitter might be a bit narrow. I immediately thought that this was a great service for businesses to market to their clients, authors and artists to communicate with their fans and also an interesting way to get word-of-mouth news (a facet of Twitter that emerged during June's Iranian election fracas).

But a recent blog by economist Tyler Cowen has me rethinking Twitter. Cowen makes an interesting case for Twitter as research tool/search engine.

Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Oh My

Not sure where to start with your social media efforts? It’s always useful to read case studies of how other organizations are tackling similar challenges. On the one hand, it’s great when you can pick up a few valuable tips. On the other hand, it’s nice to confirm that you’ve already been doing things right.

That’s how I reacted to the lead article in the September/October 2009 issue of Spectrum, SHSMD’s bimonthly member newsletter, “Launching Our Hospital’s Social Networks: An Insider’s Perspective.” It tracks the steps that Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago took to develop a social media presence. Written by two of the hospital’s marketing professionals, Leigh Ginther and Laura Prusik, this case study presents an intelligent process and meaningful observations.

Content Expectations, Scribblenauts, and Making Your Readers Work for You

I was whiling away Saturday morning at the beach when a very plugged-in friend told me he had a game I had to try. It was overcast, the surf was borderline homicidal and the first of two seal carcasses had already washed ashore, needless to say a Nintendo DS was looking like a pretty good distraction.

It all starts with content strategy....

This blog posting from "A List Apart" authored by Margot Bloomstein came to me this morning via an email newsletter I subscribe to form Junta 42.  In it, Margot talks about the importance of content strategy.  While she's primarily focused on content strategy via website design, the importance of content strategy has been something we've been talking about since long before the web became a critical marketing challenge for our customers.

The idea that all great marketing starts with a content strategy (or a messaging strategy) should come as no great epiphany to anyone (I hope)!  But taking the concept from the "big picture" to the nitty gritty of marketing planning requires spending some time to dig into some of the questions that Bloomstein raises along with some others.

Unfortunately, for many of our clients, by the time a project gets green-lighted, there is often a hard deadline that requires shortcuts at the outset and the thing that often seems to get short-changed is the content strategy discussion (at least at the level that the project deserves).

It all starts with content strategy....