The Magazine Industry - saved by the iPad?

The world of internet marketing promotion is forever changing itself, and the media environment around it!

First, the magazine industry was dead.

Then someone noticed that readership was up.  Ad revenue was up.

Now, it's in a resurgence, but not in print, they say.  Online.

And it's all due to eReaders... a.k.a. the iPad!

According to Jack Griffin of Time, “sixty percent of American consumers plan to purchase an e-reader; four out five e-reader consumers want to read magazines on those devices.” The industry has created 300 apps across the spectrum, said Griffin and added “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen such a burst in creativity.”

Barnes and Noble - whose impressive newstand is a delight to behold, and a fabulously quick colorful way to note trends - is experiencing diminishing returns with their print versions (and with magazines on their Nook reader).  They are pulling back from magazines.

Starbucks, on the other hand, is rushing into magazines with it's own branded Starbucks Digital Network - aggregated, premium content offered for free over its massive WiFi network... as a value-added to in-store drinkers.  While this might be great news in the magazine industry, it will be interesting to see how it pans out... when the real reason for the value-added might be to  simply justify the rate hike.  

How much would you pay for a cup of coffee if the New York Times was thrown in and a few other periodicals?

And on an unrelated note... there are certain places where magazines will always be the easiest most enjoyable thing to read... places dangerous for eReaders, places where it would be horrendously expensive if the eReader was dropped.  eReaders don't do well when wet.

Taking “The Social Risk”

When I started experimenting with Social Media tools to get some online visibility for my commercial real estate practice over a year ago, I did expect it would raise a few eyebrows and perhaps even illicit a few snickers from my colleagues, peers and even senior management. When I decided I would experiment with social media for business purposes, one of the first things I did was research if anyone in the CRE industry was using the tools of what many considered only a fad that is “Social Media.” What I discovered was that very few were.

While I believed at the time Social Media was going to increasingly find its place in the mainstream business world, what I was really excited about was the fact that you could count on two hands people in my industry who had really adopted these tools. I saw this as a huge opportunity to differentiate myself from the pack of CRE brokers out there who all are doing exactly the same things in terms of business development and client relationship management.

Let’s face it, the CRE industry is:

• Very conservative or stuffy, pick your preference to describe it.
• Historically late adopters of new technology or even to new ideas for business practices.

CRE doesn’t understand Social Media

I believe there are several reasons CRE brokers have been slow to embrace Social Media as a tool for their business which revolve around several misconceptions that:

• Social Media is only for the younger generation
• Social Media is a fad that would quickly fade away
• Social Media is too far out of the mainstream for Commercial Real Estate

For the rest of this article, please visit Coy Davison's Blog

Coy Davidson speaks for many when he steps back to enjoy how much he's getting out of jumping in to social media!

The ROI of Social Media... is still zero?

When sweating the budget for your company's marketing efforts in 2011, no doubt there will be discussion along the lines - What about our soc

ial media marketing?  How much have we spent?  What's the ROI?  It's time-consuming; do we still have to keep doing it?  

Augustine Fou makes some brilliant points in the her article - The ROI of Social Media is Still Nill:

There are a few good examples where marketing activities in social networks can drive quantifiable value. For example, Dell has built up a following on Twitter over time so it cannow tweet last minute deals and clear out unsold outlet inventory very efficiently. Netflix has built up a large fan base on Facebook and uses it to interact with fans, get feedback, and announce new features or content. JetBlue and Best Buy use Twitter for customer service and have thus built up a large enough following to use Twitter as a launch or awareness channel which is free, compared to other channels like e-mail or direct marketing. The value derived from the above examples is replacement value - in other words, it can sufficiently and efficiently replace traditional, costly tactics such as market research, direct marketing, e-mail marketing, etc.

Fou's key assumptions:

Social media is not media - people's conversations cannot be purchased, nor should they be purchased. The volume and influence on these conversations are not known ahead of time.

Social marketing is not marketing - instead it is listening and learning from customers' genuine conversation among peers and earning the right to be part of the conversation by providing value and earning customers' trust.

He takes it one step further:-

Consider a new way to think about social media investment which may help to align spending and actions - "social media total value of ownership." Just like companies shifted to thinking about the total cost of ownership versus the one-time cost of capital purchases (e.g., computer hardware), companies should think of the longer-term "total value of ownership" for social media. Examples of the social media assets that are "owned" after longer-term investment may include fan pages on Facebook, followers on Twitter earned over time, collections of videos on YouTube, etc.

The return on these assets is derived over time and may not be attributable to any one marketing campaign. The ROI derived from these assets will come in the form of replacement value (e.g., you can tweet your launch announcements instead of paying for e-mail and direct marketing) and lasting value (e.g., customer reviews and candid discussions about a brand or product can live on in social media and benefit future potential customers when they go online to search, at no additional cost to the advertiser). Because the return is derived over time and is not easily attributable to any particular marketing campaign, social media should be thought of and executed at the corporate level - e.g., via corporate marketing - as opposed to brand marketing, which has a short-term view and specific revenue goals.

 

The Map of Online Communities

October 07, 2010

In 2007, the web-comic xkcd published their version of an "online communities map," which use statistics (and admittedly some guesswork) to map out social networks and communication sites in the form of countries on a world map.

As cool as that was, it was taken a step further in the 2010 version. You can compare the two versions and see how things have gotten bigger and smaller in the world - notice the rise of China's social networking website QQ.

 

Check out the full-sized version at xkcd, where you can also order it in poster form for $15.

Amazing when you see it all laid out like this...given the enormous change in the last 5 years, how can you possibly anticipate with any accuracy what's coming next?

The Map of Online Communities

October 07, 2010

In 2007, the web-comic xkcd published their version of an "online communities map," which use statistics (and admittedly some guesswork) to map out social networks and communication sites in the form of countries on a world map.

As cool as that was, it was taken a step further in the 2010 version. You can compare the two versions and see how things have gotten bigger and smaller in the world - notice the rise of China's social networking website QQ.

Check out the full-sized version at xkcd, where you can also order it in poster form for $15.

Amazing when you see it all laid out like this...given the enormous change in the last 5 years, how can you possibly anticipate with any accuracy what's coming next?

5 Big Social Media Questions from Small Business Owners

via feeds.mashable.com

Great summary of issues all of us face with small business marketing, when trying to optimize "all that social media stuff!"