On Nov. 17, Harry McCracken and Joe Pulizzi will give advice on launching a successful new-media venture. Read posts by and about McCracken and Pulizzi on the ASBPE National Blog.

The advent of the Internet has made it easier and less costly than ever for writers and editors to connect with a niche audience. It also has dramatically increased the value of their skills, enabling smart writers and editors to reach millions of people, as well as make money doing so, without the backing of a large media company.

During a Webinar brought to you by ASBPE, you'll learn from Harry McCracken, the former editor-in-chief of PC World who has since founded the personal technology blog Technologizer, and Joe Pulizzi, founder and chief content officer of the search community site Junta42, how to:

• develop an effective marketing strategy to promote your content;
• identify, and participate in, online conversations that can help draw audiences to your work;
• use social networking Web sites to reach out to online communities who are likely to value your expertise;
  
• leverage the power of "free";
• and build successful permission-based marketing initiatives.

If you aim to learn how you can create a compelling B2B editorial brand on your own, then we invite you to set aside time for our webinar.

Webinar Details

Date: Monday, Nov. 17
Time: 1:00 p.m. Eastern time
Duration: 60 minutes
To register: Click here.
Cost: This Webinar is $10.00 for all ASBPE members and $35.00 for nonmembers.

About the Moderator

JOE FLEISCHER has more than 12 years of experience as a writer and editor covering a wide range of topics related to customer care. He is a sought-after speaker and moderator at leading customer care events. He has developed and moderated numerous conference sessions, workshops and Webcasts, with the aim of helping companies to improve their communication with customers.

With Brendan Read, Mr. Fleischer is the coauthor of the book The Complete Guide to Customer Support.

About the Presenters

HARRY MCCRACKEN is the founder and editor of Technologizer, a Web site and community about personal technology that reaches 400,000 unique visitors a month. Prior to launching Technologizer in July 2008, he served as editor-in-chief of PC World, the world's largest computing magazine, and its Web site, from 2003 to 2008. McCracken earned American Business Media's Timothy White Award for Editorial Integrity in 2008. He was named to Folio: magazine's Folio:40 list of media movers and shakers in 2008, and was one of min Magazine's 21 Most Intriguing People in 2008. McCracken's PC World editorials won American Business Media's Jesse H. Neal award in 2008.He has appeared as a technology expert on ABC, the BBC, CBS, NBC, the History Channel, and many other TV and radio outlets, and has written for Family Circle, Popular Science, Slate, USA Today and other publications.

JOE PULIZZI, a thought leader, speaker, writer and evangelist for content marketing and custom publishing, is founder and chief content officer for Junta42, a content marketing and custom publishing on-line resource, helping businesses of all sizes learn how to create valuable, relevant and compelling content. Voted American Business Media's "Custom Media Innovator of the Year," Joe is also president of Z Squared Media LLC, a content marketing consulting firm for marketers and publishers. In addition, Joe is coauthor of the book Get Content. Get Customers, which helps teach businesses why and how to create their own compelling content to drive their businesses.

Update, 12/4/08: See a recap of some of the key points from the webinar on the ASBPE National Blog.

Labels: ASBPE Educational Programs, New Product/Content Development, Technology, The Business of Publishing, Web, Webinars

IDG is dropping the print versions of more and more of its publications. Those print pubs that remain are adopting an "online-first" publishing model. In case you didn't see it yet, this article on the topic from The New York Times is worth a read. It talks about IDG's strategy and plans and the pitfalls of chasing page-view stats.

Labels: New Product/Content Development, State of the Industry, The Business of Publishing, Web

Via a post on Paul Conley's blog, I learned that Framingham, Mass.-based CIO is putting what appear to be paid links in story text (example). Correction, 6:26 p.m.: CIO editor in chief Abbie Lundberg says that no money changed hands. I don't know for sure what the business arrangement is for these links, and according to CIO's own letter to its readers the links are part of a larger offering of social networking tools involving LinkedIn. But still, judging by that letter and this story from Reuters, it seems apparent that this is at least in part a commercial deal.

Conley considers these links to be unethical, just like the IntelliTXT in-text ads that have appeared on eWeek's site and others. He bases part of his argument on the assumption that the links were not approved by editors, though, and CIO's editor in chief says she did give her approval.

My initial thoughts on this -- and note that what I write here does not reflect an official ASBPE stance on the issue -- were that these links perhaps were a bit different from other paid links. At least they show potentially useful information and not just ad copy. My main objection was how annoying it was to have the links right in the story text. Are CIO's readers keen on networking as to warrant putting social networking information on every company name within the story? And that LinkedIn logo is a bit irritating, sort of like reading copy with a ™ trademark symbol next to every mention of a company's name. Also, there's the question of whether the links should be clearly labeled with the word "advertisement." As Paul notes, BusinessWeek's implementation of a similar feature puts the links in a separate sidebar. I don't know that that makes it more ethical, since there's no notation indicating whether the LinkedIn pop-up is part of a business deal and what role Hewlett Packard plays. But it's at least less obtrusive and more in line with how similar links (the social networking links to Digg and Del.icio.us) are handled.

The comments people have left on CIO's site so far (even discounting Paul Conley's comment) show a mixed response. Granted, since so far most of the comments are anonymous, there's no way of knowing if all the comments were left by actual CIOs and not, say, editorial consultants or competitors of LinkedIn. Still, as one commenter to the CIO announcement put it:

I'm not so sure I like this new feature … it's a bit distracting and adds an amateurish feel to the articles. … [the links] will only distract me from the content on your site. You might want to rethink this one … [second set of ellipses is mine]

It would be great if this were a tool created by CIO editorial and tech staff on their own initiative, using an open application programming interface (API). But it's not. [See correction above -- this does not apply.] In fact, according to the Reuters report, LinkedIn must approve all applications created using its API. In other words, the links are not strictly based on editorial judgement, as called for in ASBPE's code of ethics. [Again, per Abbie Lundberg's correction, the stricken sentence does not seem to apply to the CIO situation.] And if you're trying to help the reader network, why not include other networking sites like Facebook, Friendster, Naymz, and Plaxo?

ASBPE will likely issue an official statement on this matter; if that happens, I'll update this post to add a link to that statement.

Update, 4/16/08: ASBPE President Steven Roll has commented on the issue over at the ASBPE National blog.

Update, 4/22/08: Abbie Lundberg clarifies most of the issues raised in here a post on CIO's Difference Engine blog.

Labels: Ethics, IntelliTXT, New Product/Content Development, Technology, Web

Webcasts can boost readership and ad dollars and raise brand awareness, learn how B2B publications are gaining a competitive edge through webinars.

Find out what it takes to successfully produce compelling — and profitable — webinars for your trade magazine. Join the American Society of Business Publication Editors for a webinar on Friday, March 21, to get the inside scoop from top experts at Nielsen Business Media and InXpo.

Learn how to:

• pick a compelling topic and present it for maximum impact.
  
  
• involve print and online staff editors in content development and presentation of webinars.
  
  
• manage the "church-state" divide and address common ethical issues when conducting webinars.
  
  
• package and market online events for potential viewers and sponsors.
  
  
• leverage webinars for related editorial content, including virtual trade shows, podcasts and e-newsletters.

Meeting Details

When: Friday, March 21, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. EDT.

Where: Your computer. A web conference dial-in number and access code is required, and will be provided to registrants in a subsequent e-mail.

How to attend: To reserve your place, submit a completed reservation form (80K) by March 17th to b2beditor@gmail.com or 201-221-8655 (fax). Questions may be directed to Steve Roll at 703-341-5926.

Charge: This webinar is $10.00 for all ASBPE members and $35.00 for nonmembers.

About the Presenters

Kristin Beaulieu is the Vice President of Client Services at InXpo, a leading provider of virtual online communities and tradeshows. She works with leading publishers such as Nielsen, The Wall Street Journal, CMP, IDG, Ziff Davis Enterprise and others to strategize their event businesses.

Kristin was formerly the Vice President of Digital Events for the Consumer Small Business Division of Ziff Davis Media. She managed two online event divisions for Ziff Davis: eSeminars and PCMagCast. eSeminars was launched in 2000 and grew steadily to become a highly profitable division of Ziff Davis with year-over-year exponential growth in revenue and events. In January 2006, PCMagCast was launched as the dedicated online event division of PCMagazine.

PCMagCast received both Gold and Bronze 2006 Folio: Fame Awards for "Best Online Events of the Year" for its "Security and Mobility Virtual Tradeshow" and the webcast, "Selecting and Setting up an HDTV Set". Additionally eSeminars received the 2005 Folio Fame Gold Award for "Best Online Event" for its Security Solutions Tradeshow "Protect Yourself Against Attacks."

Elliot Markowitz is Editorial Director of Nielsen Business Media Webcasts and Virtual Events and is responsible for the content of all web seminars across Nielsen's publications and brands. He is also Editorial Director of Nielsen's Small Business Resource Center and Mediajobmarket.com.

Previously, Markowitz was Editorial Director of Ziff Davis Media eSeminars, where he helped build the company's eSeminar business and launched its award-winning Virtual Tradeshow concept. Markowitz is an 18-year publishing veteran and before Ziff Davis, he was Editor of Hotel Business magazine and HotelJournal. Before that he was Editor-in-Chief of CRM Magazine and the destinationCRM.com website and related live events. Before CRM Magazine, he was Business Editor at TechTV, responsible for helping to manage the TV station's website as well as conducting live on-air interviews with key industry executives.

Markowitz also spent 11 years with CMP Media's award-winning weekly newspaper Computer Reseller News (CRN), where he held many key editorial positions including News Editor, Business Editor, and Senior Executive Editor. In 1999 he was named Editor of CRN, responsible for the entire editorial operation of the newspaper and in charge of coordinating its redesign and re-launch in June 2000. While at CRN Markowitz initiated many key alliances including the Industry Hall of Fame event in Las Vegas and the annual CRN/Raymond James Conference. Early in his career Markowitz was a news reporter on Long Island for the Massapequa Post.

He holds a B.A. in Journalism from Hofstra University and is a graduate of the Stanford Professional Publishing Course.

Labels: ASBPE Educational Programs, New Product/Content Development, Technology, Web, Webinars

The deadline to register for our Dec. 12 State of the Industry banquet has been extended to Dec. 4. The dinner will feature a panel discussion on Integrated Media--a mixed product portfolio that embraces print, the web and conferences. Discussion topics will include:

• how to align and balance different media to serve a target audience and achieve financial goals.
• how to assemble, sell, and manage portfolios of print/web/conference products for their audiences,
• how media buyers see these portfolios, and
• how readers actually want to consume information.

The event will be held at the Crowne Plaza Boston in Natick, which is located just off Exit 13 on the Massachusetts Turnpike (I-90), across the street from the new Natick Collection mall.

Get details on the banquet.

Labels: ASBPE Educational Programs, New Product/Content Development, State of the Industry, Technology, Web

Via the ASBPE Chicago blog, a useful post about the site J-Learning and its Journalism 2.0 blog. J-Learning provides information on topics such basic HTML coding, marketing your content, new reporting methods, and blogging. Chicago chapter board member Erin Hallstrom-Erickson makes special mention of the PDF download Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive. The site map is also a good starting point.

In a related post, Chicago board member Nikki Golden wonders when and how editors will be paid for new web-related duties. And ASBPE members can visit our forums to discuss how we're trained (or not) for new, web-related duties.

And of course, we'll discuss answers to questions about revenue and business models at our Dec. 12 State of the Industry panel, Integrated Media: A Work in Progress.

Labels: ASBPE Educational Programs, Blogs, Career Development, Editing, Marketing and Promotion, New Product/Content Development, Technology, The Business of Publishing, Web

RSVP deadline extended to Dec. 4.

With traditional publishing models under assault, a growing number of organizations are pinning their hopes on a mixed-product portfolio that embraces print, the web and conferences – also known as Integrated Media.

Our panel of experts, drawn from both the publishing industry and the “buy” side, will discuss ideas on:

• how to align and balance different media to serve a target audience and achieve financial goals.
  
• how to assemble, sell, and manage portfolios of print/web/conference products for their audiences,
  
• how media buyers see these portfolios, and
  
• how readers actually want to consume information.

The panel will be led by David Brousell, editor-in-chief of Managing Automation, and currently includes:

• Julia King, executive editor, events/national correspondent, Computerworld.


• Gary Beach, publisher, CIO magazine.


• David Rudzinsky, vice president and chief information officer, Hologic Inc.


• Paul Hoy, global manufacturing industry leader, Cognos Inc.

Don't miss this important event.

Meeting Details

Where:

Crowne Plaza Hotel
1360 Worcester Street (Route 9)
Natick, MA 01760
Directions

When: Wednesday Dec. 12, 2007

Networking: 6:00-7:00 p.m.
Dinner: 7:00-7:30
Panel Discussion: 7:30-8:45
Q&A: 8:45-9:15

Tickets include dinner and dessert. A cash bar will be available.

Menu: Grilled Marinated Chicken Breast with Dijon Mustard, Field Green Salad with Sherry Vinaigrette. Dessert: Fresh Fruit and Berries with Vanilla Cream

Cost:

Nonmembers: $75
Members: $65
Tables of 8: $500
Half-Tables of 4: $250

Reservations must be received by Dec. 4. Please mail your check, payable to "ASBPE-New England Chapter," to:

Alan Earls
222 Pond St.
Franklin, MA 02038

For further information or to pay by credit card, contact Alan at 508 528 6930 or email alan.earls@comcast.net.

Update, Nov. 27, 2007: The above has been updated to reflect that Paul Hoy of Cognos Inc. will replace Sharon Ward of Microsoft as a panelist.

Nov. 28: The reservation has been extended by three days, to Dec. 4.

Labels: ASBPE Educational Programs, New Product/Content Development, State of the Industry, Technology, The Business of Publishing, Web

Labels: New Product/Content Development, Technology, The Business of Publishing, Web

Labels: Blogs, Career Development, Editing, New Product/Content Development, Non-ASBPE Educational Programs, Reporting, Technology, Web

Second Life is a computer fantasy world where people assume alternate identities in order to visit virtual space stations and vampire castles. So you'd think this was one online trend business editors could skip. But according to Rob Freedman and Dave Levinson, you'd be wrong.

Freedman and Levinson spoke at the Central South-East Region Azbee Awards banquet on July 12 in Washington D.C. Freedman is immediate past president of ASBPE and has written a book called Second Life Business Strategies, to be published by McGraw-Hill. Levinson is the CEO of Cranial Tap, a firm that builds Second Life sites for business clients. Their talk was summarized in a post on the the ASBPE D.C. blog.

The two pointed out that businesses like IBM and Coldwell Banker are already starting to use Second Life, and B2B magazines could do the same. For instance, Feedman said, a homebuilder magazine could sponsor a virtual workshop on building techniques, demonstrating in a realistic recreation how to install solar panels on a roof.

Other reasons B2B editors should pay attention to what's going on in Second Life (and other virtual worlds that are emerging):

• The mass consumer market is interested in virtual worlds. That's undeniable, given the success of Second Life. The site has garnered millions of users since its launch in 2003.
  
  
• Businesses are making money serving customers in Second Life. "Some entrepreneurial users generate a six-figure income based on the objects they create and sell," the blog post quotes Levinson as saying.
  
  
• Virtual worlds are a global phenomenon. Right now, Second Life can be translated into 12 languages. That gives it potential to reach an international audience.
  
  
• Virtual worlds are a way to reach a younger audience. Why should you care? Because that's the audience of the future. Rob Freedman argued that the next generation of readers "will be totally acclimated to virtual environments." As one audience member suggested, they may even require new interfaces such as virtual worlds before they're even willing to consume new content.

Read the full recap of Freedman and Levinson's talk, from the D.C. chapter blog.

Also see:

• "Who Is Tomorrow's Reader?" -- insight from Northeast region awards banquet speaker John Carroll.
  
• A get-started guide from Second Life about its business and education applications.
  
• "Second Life has some firms second guessing," a Sept. 10 article from BtoB online, mentions that B2B media company CMP Technology has made a foray into the world of Second Life content development. It also covers some of the pitfalls and constraints of Second Life, and tells how some content developers are dealing with them. (This link added 9/24/07.)
  
• "The Virtual World of B-to-B," a post from American Business Media's MediaPace blog, updates and shows a screenshot of a virtual seminar. (This link added 9/24/07.)

Labels: ASBPE Educational Programs, New Product/Content Development, Technology, The Business of Publishing, Web

Labels: Marketing and Promotion, New Product/Content Development, State of the Industry, Technology, The Business of Publishing, Web

Via Paul Conley:

We're all constantly looking for compelling web content and for ways to increase our publications' bottom lines. An idea that covers both bases comes from the New York Times article "Giving Away Information, but Increasing Revenue." (Note: You will need to register to read the article, but it's free.)

The article shows how a professional organization -- TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) -- and a trade-show company -- Reed Exhibitions, sister company of B2B publisher Reed Business Information -- are using online video of conference sessions to expand revenues.

TED uses free, sponsored videos of short conference sessions to promote awareness of and attendance at its conferences. The response has been tremendous: millions of viewers for the videos and sellout conference crowds -- despite a 50-percent increase in the registration price.

Reed Exhibitions' business model involves charging users to download videos from its ISC West Internet security conference. It will host the videos on the recently launched ISC365.com site. Subscribers will be charged about $300 to $350 to download five videos, according to the Times, though there will be some free, advertiser-sponsored videos as well.

Labels: New Product/Content Development, The Business of Publishing, Web

I plan to do a short writeup about our Dec. 7 State of the Industry Banquet and Panel Discussion on the web and B2B publishing later this week. A few highlights:

• Tech Target's Maryfran Johnson said that at a recent Web 2.0 conference she attended, it was comforting for the audience to find out that even the big guys like Time Warner and Yahoo haven't figured out everything about the web.
  
  
• CFO's Tim Reason noted that publishers tend to look at the home page of the web site and think that that's their product. In reality, it's likely that a majority of visitors -- at CFO, 86% -- arrive at the site directly on the article or page they're interested in via an e-mail newsletter or other link and never even see the home page.
  
  
• CIO's Gary Beach questioned who was driving delivery of online content. "If we put anything video out there, any advertisers will buy it," he said. But whether his audience really wants to watch video online is another matter.
  
  
• Reed Business Information's Steve Moylan noted that there was a lot less overlap between print and online than they had originally assumed.

More later.

Correction, 12/12/06: Maryfran Johnson is no longer with Tech Target. She now has her own business, Maryfran Johnson & Associates, which provides services related to events.

Labels: ASBPE Educational Programs, New Product/Content Development, State of the Industry, Technology, The Business of Publishing, Web

Labels: New Product/Content Development, The Business of Publishing

Mark Schlack, vice president of editorial content for TechTarget, spoke at the chapter's Northeastern Region Azbee awards banquet (a second banquet for the region will be held in New York City on June 28). Schlack shared some thoughts on the current state of web publishing. "I can't claim that I'll give the definitive talk on the Internet -- I don't think anyone can -- at least, no one who actually works in the Internet," Schlack said. He did, nevertheless, have a few ideas about how to approach web publishing.

Conventional Wisdom, Circa 1995

For starters, Schlack noted that the people with money to invest in web sites used to think you had to be the first on the web with a new idea or you weren't worthwhile. "But does anyone here use AltaVista as a search engine? Or think that AOL is the best way to connect to the web? And there was iVillage. But now many of us are networking on a site called MySpace."

Another myth busted: "The punditry from the mid-'90s held that the web was a mass media phenomenon, and if you were going to do something, it had better be big. That turned out to be true, up to a point," Schlack said. Yet TechTarget has succeeded by focusing on its market.

TechTarget's web sites tend to have large audiences, but its strategy in print has been to concentrate on small-circ magazines. "We take the elite of [the web] audience and build a print mag around their needs," explained Schlack. And TechTarget magazines deliberately leave out some staples of print publications: there are no new products or news. "Those things are done better online," Schlack insisted.

Fast Forward: 2006

Schlack debunked some current ideas about the web, too. "You hear a lot about the democratizing influence of the web -- citizen journalists, people being their own experts. It's interesting and exciting, and there's lot of truth to it, but it's pretty much overblown. The idea that as editors we build a stage and the real actors are our audience -- that we don't have much to bring to the party -- is pretty much ridiculous," he said, echoing some of Jim Lehrer's recent comments.

Schlack conceded that there are cases where "a programmer who can't spell puts up a text-only web site that gets five times the traffic of anything you ever did." Nevertheless, he said, "there's more to providing information and being useful and compelling than those types can provide." Our readers have very specific needs, he said, and as B2B journalists we know something about what those needs are. "That's our profession," he said. "There are no wizards out there that can wave a wand and make it happen."

Taking Ourselves Seriously

"The audience takes the web more seriously than it did 10 years ago," Schlack observed. "I see it in news. There used to be an attitude that said 'Just get something up right away. Who cares if there's a mistake? We'll just correct it.' The news that we wrote online was disposable. That was the audience's expectation, too." But today the audience gives the web more credibility, so we have to take ourselves more seriously, too.

Schlack thinks news is an area of major opportunity for B2B web sites. "We all work in markets that are terrifically underserved in news. … It's about time that the communities that we serve had [someone] focus on their issues."

Print vs. Web

In Schlack's view, B2B web sites don't have to have the same unified look and feel print publications do. "A magazine usually has a personality, a voice… It has to hang together. On the web that doesn't hold true. It's about having a collection of tools that the readers find useful. On one part of the site, there can be a discussion with people flaming each other, and on another part, there might be some expert you can have a Q&A with. And another part has crackerjack reporters doing some great reporting. The reader will accept that." And the best part, he noted, is that in web publishing there is no paper to buy. "You can try lots of different things."

Schlack overturned another piece of conventional wisdom: "The web has been seen as a short-attention-span theater, where you don't want to write articles over 200 words. But I've worked for sites that wrote 4,000 word articles that got great readership. There is a place for deep stuff online. We don't know if people will read news online in 5-10 years, or if they'll read them on smart phones or RSS feeds. Maybe then the longer and more complex stuff will be on the web."

As for the connection between print and web staff, Schlack had this to say: "We don't get too hung up on online/print coordination -- either not having online and print working together, or having them work together all the time." But, he added, "If you're using same people for both, you're not using both media to full advantage."

The Web's Future: No More Fright Wigs

"Print is in a position that radio was in in 1950," said Schlack. "[Radio] was the biggest medium. Then when TV came in it was the second-biggest. I think online will pass print pretty soon."

But despite its increasing maturity, the web hasn't hardened into old age quite yet. "Because the web is so new, we as editors get to do some different things online. It all comes under the banner of inventing the medium. We're still inventing the medium. This is not a done deal. We're out of the Milton Berle fright-wig era, but we still have a long way to go. … Some crazy things still happen."

Schlack concluded: "It's not so much how good you are at HTML coding or what fad you sign on to support. It's much more about building solid relationships with audiences and constantly refining what you do."

For more about the banquet, including the list of regional winners, see this post.

Labels: Azbee Awards, Meeting Recaps, New Product/Content Development, State of the Industry, The Business of Publishing, Web