For me, it’s official – the world has gone totally mobile. The other night a commercial, on a kids’ cable channel my daughter watches, featured a Grandmother giving her little grandson (he looked about six to me) a tablet-reader for Christmas. I’ve been forewarned and won’t be shocked if my eight year old asks for one.
No wonder the rush continues for traditional media to expand to mobile devices, with some innovative apps already rolled out and others on the way:
The Economistjust launched an enhanced version of its publication for the iPad and iPhone. Readers can tweak the layout and graphs so they can receive all the robust content of the magazine, but in a format that makes sense for a small screen. “You’re trying to recreate your print magazine but redesign it to make the most of the medium,” said Oscar Grut, managing director of digital editions for The Economist.
Oprah’s O, The Oprah Magazinehas just released its iPad app to much fanfare. As described in the Marketwire release, “’I love the written word, and I love the iPad — to me, it’s another way to experience the intimacy of this magazine and its part of the future of the business,’ said Oprah Winfrey. ‘It’s a new way to connect with our readers, who are on a path of becoming their best selves.’”
New Corps’ Rupert Murdoch and Apple’s Steve Jobs recently announced they would be teaming up to create a new iNewspaper. “The collaboration, which has been secretly under development in New York for several months, promises to be the world’s first ‘newspaper’ designed exclusively for new tablet-style computers such as Apple’s iPad, with a launch planned for early next year,” writes Edward Helmore in this Guardian UK article. “According to reports, there will be no ‘print edition’ or ‘web edition.’”
In fact, there are already enough publications with apps (over 700) available to audiences and readers on the iPad that strategic research company McPheters and Company was able to put together a ten best list. “McPheters ranked the print-to-iPad products based on design, functionality and use of rich content.” The list presents an interesting mix of both newspapers and magazines covering the gamut of lifestyle, culture, politics, news, sports, food, fashion, etc. The number one spot went to The New Yorker app, with apps for newspaper circulation heavy-weights USA Today and The Wall Street Journal making the list at number eight and ten respectively. Fashion entrant Net-A-Porter made the list at number five.
Mobile applications are becoming such an integral part of the media landscape that other industry organizations are taking notice. The American Society of Magazine Editors announced that among the changes to the National Magazine Awards 2011, they will include a new award for mobile editions.
In this age of PR 3.0, how are you using mobile apps to connect with your audiences? If you use a mobile device to read newspapers and magazines, what outlets would top your list of best media apps? Please share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.
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Bio: I’ve been in the media business all of my adult life, first in newspapers before going full circle and joining BurrellesLuce, where I now direct the Media Measurement department. I’ve always enjoyed meeting and especially listening to the needs of our customers and others in the public relations and communications fields; I welcome sharing ideas through the Fresh Ideas blog. One of my professional passions is providing the type of service to a client that makes them respond, “atta girl” – inspiring our entire team to keep striving to be the best. Although I have been lucky enough to travel through much of Asia and most major U.S. cities for business or pleasure, my free time is now spent with my daughter, visiting family/friends, and of course the Jersey shore. Twitter: @domeasurement LinkedIn: Carol Holden Facebook: BurrellesLuce
Jeffrey Gitomer’s Sales Caffeine column is a weekly coffee break stop for me. This week’s column struck me, in particular, because it was written from the perspective of a purchaser.
Someone in purchasing, who reads his column, had contacted Jeffrey and he, in turn, had asked her for a list of the smart things that lead to a sale. She also gave him the dumb list, but I am just going to reinforce the positives below. We’ve probably heard them before, but this is a clear concise list that can never be repeated too often:
10 Smart “Things” that Lead to a Sale
Honesty. Truth at all times and at all costs. Do not lie and think you’ll get away with it, because you won’t. If I can’t tell you’re a liar immediately. I’ll find out in a short period of time. One lie banishes you.
Give me valuable ideas. If you can provide suggestions or ideas on how to make business better, you’ll be a hero to me and a valuable resource.
Understand and be interested in my business. If you make an attempt to show interest and understand, I’ll spend all the time in the world to educate you, because you’ll only be better equipped to help me. Plus, it will make your job easier as well. A win for me – and a bigger win for you.
Treat me with respect. Be courteous, on time and well mannered. If you’re not, it’s a guaranteed deal-killer.
Be a decent human being, with some sense of ethics and morals. It makes me feel positive about doing business with you and gives me some reassurance you won’t try to screw me over.
Know your own businesscold. Know it well enough so that you can make an understandable and knowledgeable presentation and answer my questions about your product or service. Provide good supporting materials – especially testimonials.
Be friendly and personable. It helps to establish a sense of comfort and trust.
Remember the details. They’re small, but they can completely make my day or ruin it.
Make good on your word. If you can’t, come to me and we’ll talk it out. If you don’t, then your credibility is damaged or even ruined (depending on how often it happens and when).
Take responsibility. You are my link to your company. Handle what I need seamlessly, and own up to a mistake if you make one.
And the single smartest thing that leads to a sale:
Don’t “sell” me. Let me “buy.” Make me see for myself that “buying” is the right thing to do.
What I like best about these tips is that all or mostly everything listed applies to any sales situation whether you are “selling” a story idea to a journalist, a service like BurrellesLuce, or almost any other “product.” And it’s also the backbone of a client service relationship as well. Here’s the customer laying out in front of us how to do business with them. Remember the adage, the customer’s always right?
And if you’re looking to tie this to your PR agency Jim Joseph, president Lippe Taylor Brand Communications, provides some tips on closing a sale in this video.
How will you apply these the next time you are working with a client or prospect or the media? If you already incorporate similar practices into current “selling” strategy, how have they benefited you?
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Bio: I’ve been in the media business all of my adult life, first in newspapers before going full circle and joining BurrellesLuce, where I now direct the Media Measurement department. I’ve always enjoyed meeting and especially listening to the needs of our customers and others in the public relations and communications fields; I welcome sharing ideas through the Fresh Ideas blog. One of my professional passions is providing the type of service to a client that makes them respond, “atta girl” – inspiring our entire team to keep striving to be the best. Although I have been lucky enough to travel through much of Asia and most major U.S. cities for business or pleasure, my free time is now spent with my daughter, visiting family/friends, and of course the Jersey shore. Twitter: @domeasurement LinkedIn: Carol Holden Facebook: BurrellesLuce
Ever since taking over the reins of the BurrellesLuce Media Measurement department, more years ago than I wish to claim, I have heard a persistent question from clients: “What is an accurate multiplier to use with the audited circulation for print media to give a more realistic readership measure.” “Isn’t there an overall industry standard to use?” It came up again as recently as this week.
Obviously the question is asked because many publications are passed around the household or office, and are available in every waiting room space in America. And I have heard multipliers tossed about, anywhere from two to as much as seven, with little substantiation as to how the number was derived.
Our response to this question has always been that we do not recommend any multipliers because we have not found data to support any overall numbers that would equate to all newspapers, large or small, daily or non-daily. The same feeling holds true for magazines.
However, there is some research on the topic this month, produced by Scarborough Research and the Newspaper National Network, working to
Flickr Image: atomicjeep
establish correlations between circulation (audited) and readership.
The examination of the two metrics was done using 25 major daily printed newspapers – although not all were in the top 25 – ranked by total circulation as reported in the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The following are some of the conclusions the study draws:
Readership and circulation are highly correlated and have been moving in the same direction over time.
Readership is decreasing at a slower rate than circulation.
The analysis found that Readers-Per-Copy is increasing.
The readership metric facilitates apples to apples comparisons with other media, which rely on audience estimates.
Although I found the report interesting, I would still be hesitant to make recommendations to a client who wished to add a multiplier because:
I would not feel comfortable using the findings from this type of report outside of the specific 25 newspaper media universe studied, such as applying the multipliers to smaller daily or non-daily newspapers.
Because readership/circulation illustrates “opportunities to see” rather than eyeballs, I would be wary of advising a client to make an apples to apples comparison to other media that rely on audience/visitor estimates.
The New York Times reported on April 26, 2010 that: “In the six-month period ending March 31, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported Sunday sales dropping 6.5 percent and weekday sales 8.7 percent compared with the same six-month period a year ago. The figures are based on reports filed by hundreds of individual papers.” With the landscape changing so quickly, how long would multipliers even for the subset of 25 newspapers analyzed be valid?
What methods do you use to judge the reach of campaigns in print media? Do you incorporate any type of multipliers in your data and if so how did you come up with them and support them going forward. Are there any other “fuzzy” numbers that you use? And for those not using multipliers, how are you qualifying those opportunities to see? How are you distinguishing them from circulation and eyeballs? Please share your thoughts and experience with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.
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Bio: I’ve been in the media business all of my adult life, first in newspapers before going full circle and joining BurrellesLuce, where I now direct the Media Measurement department. I’ve always enjoyed meeting and especially listening to the needs of our customers and others in the public relations and communications fields; I welcome sharing ideas through the Fresh Ideas blog. One of my professional passions is providing the type of service to a client that makes them respond, “atta girl” – inspiring our entire team to keep striving to be the best. Although I have been lucky enough to travel through much of Asia and most major U.S. cities for business or pleasure, my free time is now spent with my daughter, visiting family/friends, and of course the Jersey shore. Twitter: @domeasurement LinkedIn: Carol Holden Facebook: BurrellesLuce
Among all of the lists of trends and predictions for the industry in 2010, as the person in charge of BurrellesLuce Media Measurement custom, Sentiment Analysis (aka tone) jumps to the top for me. Even as more social media monitoring companies add new measurement tools, the question regarding accuracy continues to linger.
In thinking about how to work with a sentiment analysis tool the analogy with online banking comes to mind. Would you continue to pay your bills online or use an ATM if you knew you lost 30 cents for every dollar you spent? Certainly 70 percent accuracy is not good enough for my money. How can it be good enough to reflect the hard earned efforts of an ongoing PR program, which ultimately comes down to money as well? How much staff time would you still need to invest in the sentiment results to make up the difference lost? And how would you pinpoint the percentage of stories that need human review or would you ultimately have to re-review everything?
Forester Principal Analyst Suresh Vital raised some interesting points involving the maturity of sentiment analysis in a recent article on Destinations.com. The most telling point: in talking with his clients, who have deployed some form of sentiment analysis, accuracy rests at about 50 percent. “In the near term,” Vital says, “human intervention will still be necessary.”
Automated, hybrid, all-human-judgment, please share your experiences in judging the sentiment of your coverage. What is good enough and what can you afford to miss out on?
*Bio: I’ve been in the media business all of my adult life, first in newspapers before going full circle and joining BurrellesLuce, where I now direct the Media Measurement department. I’ve always enjoyed meeting and especially listening to the needs of our customers and others in the public relations and communications fields; I welcome sharing ideas through the Fresh Ideas blog. One of my professional passions is providing the type of service to a client that makes them respond, “atta girl” – inspiring our entire team to keep striving to be the best. Although I have been lucky enough to travel through much of Asia and most major U.S. cities for business or pleasure, my free time is now spent with my daughter, visiting family/friends, and of course the Jersey shore. Twitter: @domeasurement LinkedIn: Carol Holden Facebook: BurrellesLuce
by Carol Holden* Like most people, I start my business day by checking the BurrellesLuce morning news briefing to see what’s up with the competition and the industry as a whole.
Recently, I found two bright spots regarding the health of the traditional media industry.
As reported in Editor & Publisher, in a study recently released by Scarborough Research, data analysis indicates that newspapers are still read in print or online by a critical mass of adults in the U.S. on a daily and weekly basis. “While our data does show that print newspaper readership is slowly declining, it also illustrates that reports about the pending death of the newspaper industry are not supported by audience data,” said Gary Meo, Scarborough Research’s senior vice president of print and digital media services. “Given the fragmentation of media choices, printed newspapers are holding onto their audiences relatively well and this is refreshing news.”
This is certainly refreshing to me as the person directing the BurrellesLuce Media Measurement service as well as being a former employee of a small town newspaper.
The report went on to list the following statistics:
In an average week –
79 percent of adults employed in white collar positions read a newspaper in print or online
82 percent of adults with household incomes of $100,000 or more read a printed newspaper in print or online
84 percent of adults who are college graduates or who have advanced degrees read a printed newspaper in print or online
Secondly, as reported in Bulldog Reporter’s Daily Dog, a new survey from the Boston Consulting Group asserts that the average news consumer would likely be willing to pay for news online, but respondents insist on unique news stories worthy of buying. “The good news is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, consumers are willing to pay for meaningful content,” said John Rose, senior partner at Boston Consulting Group who leads the firm’s global media sector. “The bad news is that they are not willing to pay much. But cumulatively, these payments could help offset one to three years of anticipated declines in advertising revenue.”
This change carries a lot of implications. Top of my mind is the impact on how Google will search for news and, depending on the sources and the charges, it will likely influence my own RSS options. How will you advise your clients to navigate the new terrain? How will paid content change your online sources for news?
*Bio: I’ve been in the media business all of my adult life, first in newspapers before going full circle and joining BurrellesLuce, where I now direct the Media Measurement department. I’ve always enjoyed meeting and especially listening to the needs of our customers and others in the public relations and communications fields; I welcome sharing ideas through the Fresh Ideas blog. One of my professional passions is providing the type of service to a client that makes them respond, “atta girl” – inspiring our entire team to keep striving to be the best. Although I have been lucky enough to travel through much of Asia and most major U.S. cities for business or pleasure, my free time is now spent with my daughter, visiting family/friends, and of course the Jersey shore. Twitter: @domeasurement LinkedIn: Carol Holden Facebook: BurrellesLuce
For me, it’s official – the world has gone totally mobile. The other night a commercial, on a kids’ cable channel my daughter watches, featured a Grandmother giving her little grandson (he looked about six to me) a tablet-reader for Christmas. I’ve been forewarned and won’t be shocked if my eight year old asks for one.
Jeffrey Gitomer’s Sales Caffeine column is a weekly coffee break stop for me. 
