Tag Archives: Strategy

Working on an iPad strategy? Hold on there, tiger

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I’m not going to point any fingers because I think everyone has the best of intentions, but I fear that calls for community newspapers to have a strategy for the iPad are misguided — with one caveat, which I’ll get to.

Apple’s new touchscreen device kind of looks like an e-reader and, chances are, it’ll excel at that function. But to expect that old print-centric information architecture and design will be rescued by an e-reader in everyone’s bag is like tilting at windmills. That train left the station a long time ago, folks.

The iPad, rather, is an extension of the mobile ethos of information delivery based on locality and specificity:

What information do I need to know about where I am, on topics of interest, from people I trust.

Now, if an iPad strategy is a wholesale reinvention of the newsroom and means development of a brand new content strategy, I’m all for it. Because in reality (maybe more than Steve Jobs wants to admit), the iPad is just a big mobile phone that doesn’t make phone calls.

My concern is that newsrooms — especially small community newsrooms — aren’t prepared to provide information in an always-on mobile world anyway. And to focus on one aspect of a product (the e-reader) but miss the real power in its connectivity is going to be devastating.

I remain cautiously optimistic.

Attention as a resource

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Chew on this bit of full RSS feed philosphy from John Gruber (@daringfireball) when you’re doing whatever you do on the weekend:

Subscribers to a full-content RSS feed are among the readers paying the most attention, but generate among the least web page views.

A reader asking for a full-content RSS feed is a reader who wants to pay more attention to what you publish. There have to be ways to thrive financially from that.

Thanks to @danielbachhuber for the tip-off.

Maybe a little market research would do Apple some good

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A recent post by Joshua Porter attempts to sum up Apple’s innovation strategy: “Make the very best products. Business will follow,” he concludes. In it, Porter tracks down a quote by Steve Jobs in which he says the company does no market research:

“We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. The only consultants I’ve ever hired in my 10 years is one firm to analyze Gateway’s retail strategy so I would not make some of the same mistakes they made [when launching Apple's retail stores]. But we never hire consultants, per se. We just want to make great products.”*

If this isn’t bull, it’s foolish.
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A promise to update with new initiatives

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I’ve been a little slow about posting here, for a variety of reasons (mostly that we bought a house that has required a significant amount of work — and so when I don’t have a paintbrush or wrench in my hand, we’re asleep).

But after Carlos Virgen mentioned some new initiatives in Walla Walla, I implored him to post about them and he called me out to do the same, I figured I’d better oblige.

So here’s a public promise to follow up about the initiatives we’re undertaking at Mid-Valley Newspapers. It involves social networking, some failure and some rising from the ashes. We hope.

More to come.

“We don’t want to be Facebook. Facebook is Facebook.”

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Thanks to a recent conversation with a local economic development expert and programmer/web guru, I finally have a two line explanation of Web 2.0:

  • User-centric
  • Open data

Obviously, there’s a bunch to unpack there, which gives an aspiring new media strategist some hope for a prosperous future of innovation.

On Friday, mediabistro reported that NYT is developing an open API, with discussions about how much to open and how to bring data and stories to developers and — consequently — the public.

The goal, according to Aron Pilhofer, editor of interactive news, is to “make the NYT programmable. Everything we produce should be organized data…”
“The plan is definitely to open [the code] up,” [Marc] Frons [chief technical officer] said. “How far we don’t know.”

In some recent strategy sessions in the organization I work for, we’ve talked about how to incorporate more of the two concepts into our own Web offerings and how to leverage our data (especially about local business and advertising) to take advantage of our toehold in the region. And during a recent Oregon visit, Jason Kristufek and I talked about how what data might be logical to open up.

It’s good to hear the big boys talking openly about this project, and it’s encouraging to hear that they’re struggling with the same basic questions.

But here’s where I think small (and corporate) news organizations can learn the most:

Times Digital is working on to build what Frons called “a news and information platform.” Given the current explosion in social networking, we had to ask if he saw NYTimes.com integrating some networking element. His answer: We don’t want to be Facebook. Facebook is Facebook. We’ll probably do something a little bit different. We’d like it to be like the email an article, only much more robust than that.

More often than not, corporate entities are busy reinventing the wheel with “features” they “roll out” that easily “plug in” to existing Web frameworks (in our case TownNews) but don’t really enhance usability. At best, they actually arrive on time and incorporate into the existing page like they’re supposed to. At worst, they just add to the clutter currently bogging down news Web sites and continue to push the old saw about being a Web destination.

With emerging developments like Google Friend Connect and Twitter, why spend time and money building your own social applications?

Link to feeds, build databases, and concentrate on how to make the Web (and the network) work for you. Note that this is not about “free labor” from readers. These are networks intensively managed by people building trust and habit among readers.

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Make new friends, but keep the old…

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Note: This post started as a reply to a post by WeMediaGuru, but it just got too long for that format and turned into its own animal.

Today, Jason at wemediaguru notes words from Mike Blinder of the consulting firm The Blinder Group, which works with media companies to maximize revenue:

The mafia (yellow pages) comes to town every year and steals 18 to 20 percent of the revenue that newspapers should be getting in their local market. Google is doing a great job at killing yellow pages. The enemy of my enemy is my friend today.

Jason’s wondering if incorporating Google is a wise strategy for media companies, especially those who are considering local search, but aren’t entirely sold on the idea.

Building a Web strategy without Google is like trying to start a business in town 30 years ago without placing a newspaper ad.

The fact is that many people (though admittedly less all the time) think the Internet IS Google. Take Steve Krug’s example of people typing whole urls into Yahoo or AOL. The big problem Google has, though, is in rooting out relevant local information. But it’s getting better and we (local media) aren’t part of the solution.

Take my wife and me. We like local restaurants, quaint hotels and out-of-the-way sightseeing. Up until a couple of years ago, a pre-roadtrip Google search brought such local gems as Super 8 Motel and Pizza Hut.

That’s changing, in part because others are starting to realize that while Google might be the shotgun approach, once a source of good local information earns their trust, they’re the go-to for future information.

Take a Google search for restaurants in our current town.

There are three things to note here:

  1. Our newspaper isn’t among the top ten sites for information on the topic.
  2. The top two sites contain reader reviews and do, in fact, highlight some pretty cool local eateries.
  3. The search has brought up a couple of local restaurants who have done at least a passable job at SEO. Without an ally in the local media company, locals are taking the Web into their own hands.

There are some obvious lessons in all three. But where to go from here?

Why not become the local expert in getting local businesses in front of Googlers? Could we start consulting those who already have a Web presence in SEO (for a fee) and a link?

Obviously, reader reviews are a big part of Web 2.0 trust-building. Businesses don’t often want to take the bad with the good (and years of pandering local business coverage have taught them bad habits about dealing with us).

Why not sell ad space, for example, next to reader reviews of that business? Then maximize Google’s ability to access that information?

Am I out of my mind here?