DCP Dialogue

Sports Custom Content That Stands Out

With an abundance of sports coverage easily accessible across mainstream media, why do sports organizations develop their own custom content programs? There are several good answers to this question that Barry Janoff discusses in his article, Sports Custom Content: The Fans are the Stars, published in the latest issue of Content magazine.

This article talks about several sports teams but I pulled quotes below that relate to one of DCP’s major sports clients, the San Francisco Giants.

The main goal behind sports custom content is to keep loyal fans rooting for their teams. How is that accomplished?

1. Provide “more nuanced, more intimate” access to players and teams.

“Information is everywhere, and much of it is free,” says Mario Alioto, Giants senior vice president of corporate marketing. “We have access and information about our players that other media don’t have.”

2. Give fans an opportunity to share their stories.

“It’s one thing to have a magazine that interests fans, but the best kind of content marketing is when people feel they are part of it,” says Jeff Gire, senior editor at Diablo Custom Publishing. “The team wanted Giants Magazine to have stories that involved the fans.” As a result, we created a new section, “Our Fan Story”, which gives fans a place to share personal stories about the Giants.

Be sure to read the article to get the whole story.

Consumers Still Prefer Print Magazines

Take a look at this very interesting whitepaper, Leveraging Loyalty to Transform Publishing, produced by the CMO Council and InfoPrint Solutions. It addresses “The Impact of Relevance in Publishing and Advertising.”

I recommend downloading this 12-page whitepaper that includes the detailed findings about what people want from their magazines. It confirms what we all believe is most essential—relevance.

Here's some info pulled from the first page of the whitepaper.

“To get a clear picture of what opportunities might exist for publications transformation, the CMO Council asked consumers what they wanted from their magazine experience.

The audit revealed that consumers do not want to give up their cherished print publications, and further that their experiences within these preferred pages has shaped and molded their buying decisions.

In a world where the internet threatens to change the face of loyalty—offering new and exciting real-time connections—magazines seem to be the one constant that consumers are not ready to relinquish. According to our survey:

92 percent plan to stick to print when it comes to their magazine consumption

Only 24 percent intend to eventually switch over to some form of e-reader device

The real message consumers want to send to publishers is keep the content relevant, be it editorial, advertorial, or advertising. But, well placed, content rich and even personalized advertising will lead to new opportunities (and even renewed opportunities) for profitable customer engagements."

Click here to download the whitepaper and read the detailed findings of the online consumer survey.

Introducing John Rodenburg, Director of Custom Media

Diablo Custom Publishing (DCP) is excited to announce that John Rodenburg has joined our organization as the Director of Custom Media. John previously held the position of Vice President and Publisher of Travel and Leisure Golf for American Express Publishing. As a long time veteran of Time Inc., John held several senior positions at Sports Illustrated, including the Associate Publisher of Marketing and Associate Publisher of Sales. Prior to moving to New York in 2000, John was the Northwest Advertising Director at Sports Illustrated and a resident of the East Bay.

Barney Fonzi, Group Publisher for Diablo Publications comments, “John’s background makes him the perfect addition to our team, and we welcome his seasoned experience, strong business development skills, energy and business acumen. We are confident that John will be able to leverage his proven strategies that have worked in his past endeavors, as well as his entrepreneurial forward thinking.” 

Speaking about his new role, John said, “I’m very excited about returning home to the Bay Area, and I’m equally excited about the opportunity to share my experience to help DCP reach new heights by leveraging their great reputation and brand, their diverse client portfolio of top notch work and their talented team of professionals. DCP is poised for growth and I’m excited to be a part of this expansion.”

In the next month, expect to see a blog entry from John summarizing his outlook for the Custom Media market.

Content Marketing Rises to $47 Billion in 2009

According to a new survey from the Custom Content Council (CCC), U.S. corporations spent a record $47.2 billion on branded content last year. The 10th annual industry “Characteristics Study: A Look at the Volume and Type of Content Marketing in America for 2010” includes the study of electronic and other forms of content marketing for the first time—which explains the significant increase in spending from 2008.

This year’s study reveals that 32% of the overall marketing, advertising and communications budget were dedicated to content marketing. This is the greatest-ever proportion of funds dedicated to content marketing in the 10-year history of this study.

What does this mean?

Marketing organizations recognize the need to communicate regularly with their audience and provide them with meaningful content. Marketing today is not as much about flashy marketing campaigns as it is about constant interaction and sharing of relevant information with a targeted audience. Since today’s consumers make highly educated decisions, marketing organizations need to play a key role in the transfer of knowledge and participate in their consumers’ decision-making process. The more valuable content an organization provides, the more likely they will build and grow a loyal customer base.

How are companies communicating with their audience today?

Custom Magazines/Newsletters Still Strong:

• In 2009, average circulation per issue increased to an all-time high of 48,162 copies per issue.
• The number of unique printed custom publication titles decreased from 1.9 in 2008 to 1.7 in 2009. That said, those titles published increased in both page count and circulation.

Other Forms of Branded Content:

• The most common other forms being used are website updates of articles, blog post and e-newsletters.
• The least common are mobile and e-zines such as flipbooks and interactive PDFs.

What marketing vehicles are companies expecting to add in the future?
While mobile content is not yet widely used, it does rank as the medium that most marketers believe they are likely to invest in next year. Beyond that, marketers plan to invest in video and audio.

Custom Content Council Executive Director Lori Rosen said, “As more and more companies explore custom content solutions across print and digital platforms, we will continue to see an increased financial investment. Things are changing rapidly—the data shows just how much change the industry has undergone in 12 months-and we haven’t even touched social media surface. Next year we will be measuring Twitter, Facebook and more. It’s an exciting time to be involved in content marketing in all its forms.”

Digital Magazines vs. Online Magazine Microsites vs. Websites

What’s the Best Solution?

There are many options for presenting magazine-style content online. How do you know which approach is ideal for your publication? You can start by answering three simple questions.

1. Is your online magazine an extension of a print publication?
2. Do you want to optimize your online magazine for web viewing?
3. Will you update your online magazine content regularly?

First, what are the different solutions?

If we put online magazines on a continuum with print-centric solutions (PDF/Digital Magazine) on the left to web-centric solutions (full featured website) on the right, magazine microsites would fall in the middle. Below are explanations of each.

PDFs are the simplest online versions of a print magazine. You just post the PDF file of your magazine online and allow people to view it. But it’s not very compelling for readers because:

• Large files are often blocked by firewalls and slow to download
• Readers don’t want to download big files onto their computer
• Reader experience is cumbersome—you have to read pages sequentially
• No interactive content

This option is also limiting for publishers—you can’t add rich media or new content, you can’t track viewer activity, and search engine optimization (SEO) is limited. This solution is quickly becoming obsolete.

Digital Magazines (flip books) are high-quality online replicas of print publications that offer value-added functionality such as interactive media and live links. There’s no file downloading and it’s easier for readers to navigate with a flexible control strip and search functionality. Advertisers like this approach because they can replicate print advertisements online and embed active links to their website. However, people find these solutions hard to read because they’re based on PDFs that were designed for print viewing, not for the Web. Reading requires a lot of zooming in and zooming out. And publishers can’t add new content. Digital magazines are a lively way to view a static print magazine online.

Online Magazine Microsites are HTML-based solutions that take advantage of the design and interactive possibilities of the Web. Based on a print publication or an online-only magazine, it’s a dynamic gathering place where readers peruse your magazine content, view rich media (videos, podcasts, slideshows), and link to your social media sites. Online magazines replicate the magazine-reading experience with a flag treatment, Table of Contents, feature stories, and departments. By mixing custom designed feature articles with various article templates, you don’t have to design every page from scratch. Instead, you upload content as often as you want using a simple Content Management System (CMS). Readers prefer this solution because articles are easy to consume and graphically compelling, content is updated regularly, plus navigation is highly intuitive.

Websites can be used to house online magazine content for organizations’ whose primary business is magazine publishing. For these companies, the main website is an extension of the magazine. For organizations that do more than magazine publishing, articles posted on the primary site get lost unless they’re packaged in a magazine microsite.

What are the ideal scenarios for each solution?
Getting back to the original questions….

1. Is your online magazine an extension of a print publication?
2. Do you want to optimize your online magazine for web viewing?
3. Will you update your online magazine content regularly?

If your online magazine is based on a print publication you can consider all options. But if you’re creating a web-only magazine it makes sense to focus solely on web-centric solutions. Why create a print-centric publication to be viewed online? Why invest in designing each and every page of your publication from scratch when it’s never going to print? There are much more efficient ways to do this. If you plan to update your content regularly, PDF/Digital Magazines are not a viable solution—an online magazine or website is the way to go.

The ideal scenarios for each solution are:

PDF/Digital Magazines
You have a print issue and have already invested in the design of each page. Repurpose it. Don't want to add any extra content; just want to replicate your print piece. Great for magazines with ads—publishers can sell online ad space in addition to print.

Online Magazine Microsites
You want to extend your magazine's brand online and give your magazine lovers a solution optimized for the Web. Regularly post fresh content to keep your audience engaged. Make your magazine a two-way conversation with your audience through article commenting.

Websites
Your company is all about your online magazine. Readers don’t distinguish between your magazine’s brand and your organization’s brand.

Social Media Marketing: Not the Leading Marketing Tool

The title of a recent Junta42 Content Marketing blog entry caught my eye--“Five Reasons Social Media Marketing Comes Last”. When every other blog entry, email subject line, whitepaper, and webinar advocates the high priority of social media marketing, it was refreshing to read something different.

Based on an excerpt from Shama Kabani’s new book, The Zen of Social Media Marketing, this blog entry explains why social media marketing should come last in your marketing plan, yet why it must be there.

The main distinction Shama makes is that social media is a consumer platform, not a marketing platform. With a consumer-owned platform, you can listen and you can participate in the conversation but you don’t control what or how much is said. You still need a marketing platform—a one-way communication vehicle that enables you to deliver your marketing message to the consumers you want to reach.

Since social media is where your customers are, you have to be there. But don’t forget that while social media provides a great place to meet and greet customers, you still need traditional marketing platforms (i.e. advertising, websites, email, e-newsletters, PR, webinars, special events, catalogs, etc.) to communicate your comprehensive marketing message.

SEO: The real reason for corporate blogging

Many companies develop corporate blogs with the primary goal of building a large subscriber base and generating a loyal readership. From this ongoing relationship they hope to build brand awareness and promote goodwill. Maybe that’s why 77% of business bloggers are unhappy with their current blogging efforts (according to Forrester Research.)

Why Blogging is Your #1 Search Marketing Tool, an interesting and thorough whitepaper produced by Compendium, provides lots of statistics that point to the real reason why companies should blog—to drive your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Below are some of the statements I found most compelling:

• As much as 80% of all web activity begins with online search.
• Historically, 85-95% of clicks on a search engine results page (SERP) occur in the organic section of the results page—not in the Pay Per Click (PPC) section.
• Statistics indicate that a consumer’s capacity for corporate blog subscriptions rarely exceeds 2-3.
• Corporate blogging is not about establishing a following—it’s about creating keyword-rich, relevant and personal content that resonates with your target market helping them solve their problems via search.
• A common misconception among corporate bloggers is that they’re writing for regular, repeat customers when—in actuality—those who read corporate blogs tend to skew toward first-time visitors by an 80% margin.
• With valuable and relevant content, frequent updates, and subject specificity, corporate bloggers can greatly improve their search engine rankings.

I encourage you to download this 12-page document and read it from start to finish. You’ll find useful tips on how to select titles and keywords for your blog, how frequently you should blog, who should blog, how short a blog entry can be, and much more.

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.

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....

Content on the web....Part 1

Saw an interesting factoid this morning that I thought was worth sharing.

According to this article (from foliomag.com) titled How Much is a Magazine's Content Worth?, Guy LeCharles Gonzalez notes that of the 133 million blogs tracked by Technorati in 2008 only 7.4 million of them (that's 5.5%) had been updated in the previous 120 days. 

As in four months. 

I think by any measure, it's fair to say that a blog which hasn't been updated in four months is no longer a blog that has any meaningful presence on the web.

Allowing for the fact that some, perhaps many, of those blogs may be similar to the one I launched ten months ago (The Offel Family blog) -- in other words, launched as a purely personal endeavor and of virtually no interest to anyone except my mom -- there is no doubt that many of them were launched by organizations seeking to engage in a dialog with their customers.  Yet now almost 95% of them are floating like virtual ghosttowns on the ethersphere.

Gonzalez goes on to make a number of salient points about traditional publishers using the web to propagate content.  But the phenomena of abandoned blogs got me thinking about the broader question of valuing content on the web and making the commitment to invest in "doing content right."

As we have started to do more and more interactive work for clients, including developing online magazine microsites, we are finding ourselves at the receiving end of a blank stare when we pose the question,"How much are you budgeting for ongoing content development?"