It’s tough being a pioneer. If your colleagues sometimes oppose your efforts to make a Website more user-friendly, here’s a way to dodge the arrows. Check out the Nielsen Norman Group’s usability site for guidelines on persuading subject matter experts to bring Web content more in line with the target audience’s needs.

The key is to study actual user behavior, under the watchful eyes of the subject matter experts. As the authors point out, many people can only be convinced if they see the truth for themselves.

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I’m hardly a fashionista, but once in a while—usually when I decide that au courant toes no longer justify the pain—I buy a new pair of shoes. And I always buy them from Maryland Square, a mail-order house that carries every brand imaginable, ships promptly, and most important, inundates me with catalogues and e-mail. I’m what a marketer would call an active loyalist.

I also buy books from Amazon. Do I appreciate their e-mails and Web site lists of more books I might like? Of course. And who doesn’t love Angie’s List for helping to protect us from the vast array of scams in our capitalist paradise? I especially like Amazon and Angie’s List because they know what matters to me. Angie’s List wants to know how I felt about the vendors I found on their list and wants me to add ratings.

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Peter Korchnak wrote about a presentation given by Roger Burks, senior writer with the 30-year-old charity Mercy Corps. The gist of it was that good storytelling can motivate action on the part of readers—for Mercy Corps, that usually means getting them to write a check.

The Editorial Advantage has published several posts on the role that the Internet can play in fund-raising.  Most charities leave money on the table, according to Website usability expert Jakob Nielsen, because they fail to tell prospective donors what the organization is about and how it uses its money.

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You can skip this if you’ve read the book Nudge and you’re already incensed about the proliferating “most popular” lists on the Web.

But maybe you want your organization to present “most popular” information in a positive way and need some more ammunition. Carl Bialik, “The Numbers Guy” of The Wall Street Journal, recently slammed the growing scourge of “top 10″ news stories on Websites. He went on to cite several well-regarded academic studies explaining why people behave like herd animals.

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The future of publishing is taking shape on the Web, and it is a mega mall.

The Nieman Marcus of the high end sites is Danilo Black, which designs and produces digital magazines. A co-venture of eminent designers Eduardo Danilo Ruiz of Monterrey, Mexico, and Roger Black of New York, Danilo Black has introduced “dynamic media” for a handful of publications. The showcase is FLYP (pronounced “flip”), which dazzles readers with video, photography, and good writing in an array of subject areas. FLYP has been called the LOOK magazine of the Internet.

FLYP is reportedly put out by fewer than 20 people. They probably could afford to hire more, but according to Danilo Black, the magic in dynamic media is to conceptualize the story concurrently in words and pictures. Not that many people have those skills, although the best print designers have advocated the approach for years. If only more publishers had listened to them, we might see a future for print media.

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Posted in Framing content in print and on the Web, Marketing and promotion No Comments »

Everyone loves a good story. So is it any wonder that the most effective online advertising is the story that includes brand information?  It leaves most other types of online advertising in the dust, particularly pop-up ads.

This finding is reported by a company with a vested interest, ARAnet, which develops and distributes articles about clients’ products. But assuming the Opinion Research Corporation did an honest job for ARAnet-and there’s no reason to think otherwise-the results are instructive: Read the rest of this entry »

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Disappearing newspapers give rise to anguished discussions about impacts on the democratic process — who will keep an eye on the shysters at city hall, who will speak for the disenfranchised?

Business is different. Even massive dislocations get taken in stride. Unlike the newspaper industry, B2B consultants figure that as long as there are Bs needing to talk to other Bs, there will be B2B publishing. The question is simply what will it look like?

Not like today, according to publishing consultant Paul Conley. Giant print B2B publishers are mired in debt, and Websites aren’t selling enough ads. And so, polishing his crystal ball in a newsletter article for the American Society of Business Publications Editors, Conley predicts that when the dust settles in 2010, we’ll see that five B2B journalistic entities have moved up the ladder to dominate the market: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Industry trends No Comments »

Lots of readers of The Wall Street Journal e-mailed Monday’s interesting and timely piece about the “new class of worker,” the Nearly Autonomous, Not in the Office, doing Business in their Own Time Staff—nanobots, for short.

It’s an especially hot topic among publications managers. Increasingly, staff members want to telecommute to save gas and time, share childrearing responsibilities, and focus less on office politics and more on the task at hand. Not all senior managers are eager to manage nanobots. The usual sticking point: measuring productivity of the worker you seldom see.

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Posted in Management of a publications enterprise No Comments »

An analyst with the marketing research firm Forrester recently talked to the Custom Publishing Council about online content management strategies that publishers are using to achieve growth.

While the strategies look intelligent, closer examination of the analyst’s examples reveal that they still need a little work.

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Posted in Technologies for publications and Web content No Comments »

My colleagues and I are fans of the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit outgrowth of the St. Petersburg (FL) Times that is devoted to improving the craft of journalism. So it’s in the spirit of collegiality that I’m responding to Joe Grimm, who writes “Ask the Recruiter” for Poynter Online.

A reader asked: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Management of a publications enterprise 1 Comment »

Dan Kohan, you sly devil.

The proprietor of Sensical Design, a frequent collaborator, took issue with our recent post about Amazon’s wireless reading device, Kindle, and its pro’s and con’s versus traditional print publication. His comment chided us for neglecting the self-publishing option and its many advantages for certain writers. As an example, he cited a classic in the field, the Complete Guide to Successful Publishing by Avery Cardoza (3rd ed. 2003).

What Dan didn’t say is that, if you explore Cardoza’s career, you quickly discover the true secret to successful publishing. It’s finding your niche and taking total control of it. Avery Cardoza, a mathematical wizard from an early age, began building his empire in 1991 with The Basics of Sports Betting and The Basics of Bingo.

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Posted in Framing content in print and on the Web 1 Comment »

“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”
– A.J. Liebling

What can one person accomplish using the Web? It’s astounding.

The American Society of Business Publication Editors proved it in a recent Webinar packed with tips from two pioneers of the do-it-yourself Web world.

These two each started successful Web-based businesses essentially on their own although with support from heavy-hitting collaborators who had come to know them in their earlier 9 to 5 lives. Their message: you—or your small organizational unit—can do what they did. Do it right, and your readers will do our jobs better and see the world more clearly as a result.

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Posted in Framing content in print and on the Web, Marketing and promotion 5 Comments »

As a former newspaper journalist, I’m delighted whenever I see new media spring up where the now-depleted daily press once held a monopoly.

We assist clients in putting out state newsletters, so we’ve been enjoying the healthy crop of websites devoted to state legislative news. For example, no fewer than three websites put out state legislative news. Each is a little different:

• The National Conference of State Legislatures website is explicitly for insiders—legislators and staffs.
• Stateline.org, published by the Pew Center on the States, is for the rest of us.
• And Statenet serves subscribers who need to know details about any piece of state legislation in the U.S. As opposed to the first two, which are do-it-yourself, this custom news service is kind of like hiring a personal shopper.

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Posted in Industry trends, Marketing and promotion No Comments »

I found out about this from an ad in my monthly newsletter from the American Society of Business Publication Editors: the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism offers free online courses “specifically geared to editors who wish to learn more about business journalism and how to cover public and private companies.”

Writing about business well is an important skill and one that’s all too rare, so we headed over there to dip into a few of their hour-long online tutorials, which address the following: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Writing and Editing No Comments »

One of our recent posts quoted a WIRED magazine executive who wants publishers to hurry up and introduce sensemaking machines that present continually updated information in readily comprehensible ways.

If you haven’t had a chance to see one of the best such machines, check out the pioneering Gapminder, a website whose software was originally developed in Sweden. Google now owns the software, and the staffs merged last year.

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Posted in Technologies for publications and Web content 1 Comment »

WIRED NextFest wrapped up in Chicago yesterday. If you missed it, you can still enjoy a catalog of innovations (PDF) that will make life more efficient, environmentally benign, and fun in the years to come.

With all the turmoil in the publishing industry, newspapers in particular, don’t be surprised at the absence of sleek, exciting presentations of text and graphic media.

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Posted in Technologies for publications and Web content 1 Comment »

If any of your colleagues are less than 100 percent enthusiastic about your Web projects, here is how to light a fire under them:

Share the latest findings of the Digital Future Project (PDF), conducted for the past seven years by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.

Start with this:

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Posted in Industry trends, Technologies for publications and Web content No Comments »

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

If department store merchant John Wanamaker were alive today, he would find no shortage of firms wanting to sell him answers. The field of Web metrics (also called Web analytics) is exploding, as data analysts get better at sifting through data on site visits and telling Web content managers what they all should want to know:

• When people come to your site, what do they do?
• How do they feel about your organization and its Web site?
• How do you stack up against your competitors?
• What results from all these visits?

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Posted in Framing content in print and on the Web, Technologies for publications and Web content No Comments »

Expert reviewers are getting ready to provide their annual critiques for business-to-business publications seeking ways to improve content.

The American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE) and Trade Association Business Publications International remind b2b editors that only two weeks remain to sign up for an assessment by a panel of peers. Submission deadline is October 1.

The Magazine Critique Service delivers an objective outside analysis by editorial and design reviewers. The panel scrutinizes publications from cover to cover, looking at usefulness to the reader, flow, tone, and other characteristics. Reviewers also scrutinize use of white space, photographs, illustrations, fonts, colors, and general layout issues.

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Posted in Industry trends, Management of a publications enterprise No Comments »

Organizational life is full of outdated rituals, from office parties to annual performance reviews that do little to improve the quality of product, process, or personal experience. Technology can do away with many of them. For instance, an organization can do an online survey to find out how staff would really like to socialize. A manager can conduct a round of “exit interviews” after a project ends and provide feedback while the project is fresh in everyone’s mind.

One ritual may well go away on its own, the telephone call. Not the serious conversation with subtle, sensitive dimensions that must be conducted right away by two or more people who can’t meet. Or the pleasant, thirty-second, “Hi, are we still on for drinks at 7:00?” But perhaps the discussion of a topic that neither party understands very well, or the interminable conference call in which half the participants are multitasking and the rest are wondering who’s speaking and whether anything is really being accomplished.

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Posted in Industry trends, Management of a publications enterprise, Technologies for publications and Web content No Comments »

First, the good news. The majority of editors of business-to-business, or B2B, publications think their editor-in-chief demonstrates effective leadership behavior.

But what they see isn’t exactly the most effective behavior. Close, but no cigar.

This was what Heather Onorati, Chief Editor of Advanstar’s Healthcare Centralized Content Group, concluded in her survey of 211 B2B editors, which she discussed at the recent editorial conference of the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE). ASBPE co-sponsored the study.

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Posted in Management of a publications enterprise, Writing and Editing No Comments »

As metropolitan dailies shrink and commercial websites struggle to entice advertisers, one news medium is enjoying unprecedented success: free weeklies.

Bulging with local ads, they cost practically nothing to produce or distribute. They may provide little intellectual stimulation, but major news media and Web investors find them intensely interesting. How, they wonder, can we do what they do?

“Local is where the Web is,” concluded the organizers of the latest invitation-only Web Managers Roundtable, Julie Perlmutter and Gary Arlen. “Local,” they say, “is vital to success in today’s digital environment.”

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Posted in Framing content in print and on the Web, Industry trends No Comments »

I wrote a few weeks ago about the tremendous pool of talented journalists coming on the market as newspapers downsize their newsrooms. Since then, I have advertised on the Poynter Institute website, the country’s premier hiring hall for writers, reporters, and editors, and I have searched their résumé database, and guess what? The databases were thin, and almost nobody responded to my ad.

Where are they?

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Posted in Management of a publications enterprise No Comments »

Is your publication or Web site recruiting experienced writers, editors, graphic designers, or photographers? You couldn’t ask for a better market.

As the newspaper industry spirals downward, newsroom downsizing has sent hundreds of talented journalists on job searches. One of the best places to find talent is the Website of the Poynter Institute, the journalism school founded in 1975 by Nelson Poynter, chairman of the St. Petersburg Times and its Washington affiliate, Congressional Quarterly.

Job posting packages start at $50 per month and include access to the résumé database. From experience, I recommend searching the database as well as posting a job. Qualified people may respond to a personal e-mail who wouldn’t respond to a job posting. After you’ve sent out 100 résumés, with no responses, it’s easy to get discouraged.

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Posted in Industry trends, Management of a publications enterprise, Writing and Editing 1 Comment »

Web content managers: Do you wonder whether it makes sense to manicure your splash pages? Choose every word with care? Well, the jury is in.

It makes enormous sense.

Web design consultants have long advocated brevity. Many words make for glazed-over eyes and short visits. But now a scientifically reliable study “Not Quite the Average: An Empirical Study of Web Use,” demonstrates the limits of readers’ tolerance for verbiage. And is it low.

With the authors’ permission, the noted Web usability consultant Jakob Nielsen analyzed over 45,000 page views of 25 users who were above average in intelligence. No shortage of attention span in this group.

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Posted in Design, Framing content in print and on the Web No Comments »

Too often, editors regard splendid writing as purely a gift. They think people are born with it.

But outstanding reportage, produced on deadline, actually grows out of the writer’s profound understanding of the subject. When we see it — not that often — it reminds us that the editor’s first order of business is always to assign a writer who knows the topic.

Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post knows horse racing. On Saturday, less than four hours after the tragic event, she went online with a heartbreaking account of how Eight Belles broke both front ankles and was destroyed, having just won second place in the Kentucky Derby. The piece, “Is Horse Racing Breeding Itself to Death?” far surpasses any other reporting on the event. It isn’t only because of the writer’s lyrical skills, although they’re evident in abundance: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Writing and Editing No Comments »

I joined an entrepreneurs’ support group a few weeks ago. Our latest topic of dinner conversation: How to close the gap between what we know and what we do?

You know what I’m talking about. We write business strategies that look worth at least a million or two in investments or donations. So why can’t we get our staffs to march in lockstep? Worse, why can’t we get ourselves to do more of the things we ought to do, more of the time?

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It’s spring cleaning time, and here are a few phrases you’ll never miss: “out-of-the-box thinkers,” “we sell solutions,” and “take a few minutes to learn more about us.”

But without buzz words, what would managers say? Tate Linden recommends they say what they know. (This drew a round of hear-hears from his recent audience, 50 or so managers who attend a monthly invitation-only Leadership Breakfast in Reston.)

They all support his basic idea. Leaders use words to make something “good” happen by influencing people—something that wouldn’t otherwise occur.

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Posted in Framing content in print and on the Web No Comments »

Here’s good news: TV viewing time is down to an average of 14.5 hours per week, from 21 hours in 1990.

Here’s more, although it’s old news if you’re the parent of a teen-ager or a 20-something: Internet usage now averages 17.5 hours per week.

That’s hardly news to the Barack Obama campaign staff either. They say they raised $28 million online in January.

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Posted in Framing content in print and on the Web, Industry trends No Comments »

There’s a lot of loose talk about “modular” content on the Web. But done correctly, it enables publishers to reuse print information online without a time-consuming rewrite. Even better in the long run, it delivers information in an efficient and memorable way that makes it more genuinely useful than ever before.

Deborah A. Kenny, a vice president of the 40-year-old industry leader Information Mapping, Inc., recently taught a short course in modular content in a Webinar put on by the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Society for Technical Communications.

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Posted in Framing content in print and on the Web, Industry trends 1 Comment »

As regular readers know, this blog exists to provide practical information to managers of print publications and Website content. If you happen to be the person who started your organization, or if you’re thinking about starting one, you might be interested in a group I joined this week.

It’s an entrepreneurial support group, launched by one of my fellow alumni with support from our alma mater. As you would expect from a dozen entrepreneurial MBAs, we told a lot of war stories, mostly with the same theme: overcoming adversity. Try, fail, try again, succeed at last. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Management of a publications enterprise 2 Comments »

In recent posts, we pointed out the value of being a thought leader and offered tips on getting your thoughts published.

Those posts concerned non-fiction. But one speaker at the recent ASBPE (American Society of Business Publication Editors) meeting on getting published was a literary agent who exclusively represents authors of fiction for children. Upon reflection, we concluded that every writer would benefit from some of her pointers, especially these: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Framing content in print and on the Web 1 Comment »

In a recent post, a public relations professional encouraged readers to position themselves as thought leaders in their fields through initiatives like publishing a book.

Publish a book. What does that take?

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Posted in Management of a publications enterprise, Marketing and promotion No Comments »

How many visitors leave your Website disappointed because they didn’t find what they expected? There’s no telling. But you can be sure that some do.

I just left two Web sites disappointed. One was the Brady Campaign for Gun Control and the other was the National Rifle Association. There’s a lot to like about both sites. They’re well-organized and persuasive. But I went to them looking for some specific information: What do serious gun-control advocates or serious firearm enthusiasts make of handguns and assault weapons? In particular, I was hoping that either site could shed light on something reported in “The Editorial Advantage” last week.

A frequent contributor to this blog, Gabe Goldberg, wrote a post which mentioned in passing that he and his wife had recently enjoyed recreationally firing an Uzi submachine gun and a Glock semiautomatic pistol while vacationing in Las Vegas.

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Posted in Design 18 Comments »

One thing publications and Web content managers love about their work is delivering epiphanies. The payoff is biggest when a reader gets in touch to say thanks for that Aha! moment, but even without feedback writers and editors usually know when they’re delivering the goods.

The feeling makes up for all the angst over everyday Web- and print-communications problems: what to say, how to say it, whom to speak to, how often, how much to spend doing it, and so forth. This self-contemplation brings to mind The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which the computer Deep Thought takes seven and half million years calculating the ultimate answer to the great question of life, the universe, and everything, and comes up with … 42.

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Posted in Framing content in print and on the Web No Comments »

Life is full of ethical dilemmas. Yet people insist on creating new ones.

Take Sunday’s New York Times column “The Ethicist,” in which a reader said:

A colleague subcontracted to me a freelance writing job composing brochures for two local businesses. Both were well received, but my friend did not inform either client that I did the work for fear that the next time they might hire me directly. Shouldn’t she tell the clients that the words are not hers (even if she doesn’t reveal my name)? Can I present the work as mine to potential clients?

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Posted in Management of a publications enterprise 1 Comment »

Lots, says veteran Web content manager Bill Allman, Chief Content/Creative Officer of The Health Central Network, which operates disease-specific Web sites accessible through a common portal. While most were originally developed independently, all now try to play by the same rules.

One rule is to make the experience for users worth repeating. Take registration, for instance. After all these years, Web sites still struggle to get information on users, and overcomplicated, ill-placed registration sites still discourage people from signing up. Take advertising. Would-be sponsors still make unreasonable requests like Flash ads on sites for migraine sufferers or a new color palette for the entire site that matches their pills.

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Posted in Framing content in print and on the Web, Industry trends No Comments »

So we were wondering how we could make Thanksgiving special on “The Editorial Advantage” without spending a fortune, and …

… you saw it, right? …

our Webmaster, Brian Adams of Big Fish Design, suddenly came up with this animation.

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Posted in Design No Comments »

You may have watched the newspaper industry take its latest hits, but in case you missed the 3rd quarter reports, advertising revenue was down 7.4 percent. That’s for print as well as online editions.

And here’s a key reason: continued drop in readership. During the first 6 months of this year, circulation dropped an average of 3.5 percent on Sunday and 2.5 percent daily.

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Posted in Framing content in print and on the Web, Industry trends No Comments »

“Word people must think visually and picture people must think verbally.” Why? Because the key to winning readers is to persuade them that a message is worth reading, and that takes a coordinated presentation of text and graphics.

The man who taught the publishing world how to do that, Jan V. White, received this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE).

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Posted in Design, Writing and Editing 4 Comments »

Do you ever wonder if you’re paying the right price for outsourced creative services?

We hire a lot of writers, editors, and graphic designers. As managers of publications projects, we negotiate project costs with the client and pay subcontracting fees to creative professionals.

Our pricing practices reflect experience on both sides of the negotiation, as service providers and as contractors. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Design, Management of a publications enterprise No Comments »

[Excerpts from a workshop sponsored by the American Society of Business Publication Editors, D.C. chapter]

“Offices are evil, inefficient, and costly.”

- David Silverberg, editor, HSToday

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Publishing on the Web is different from print in many ways, including the demands that editors place on writers. Instead of a lengthy feature, they want many short takes. And they want them right away.

Writers who’ve grown accustomed to print deadlines, even if they’re for a daily publication, may need to adjust their internal clocks when they write for the Web.

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Posted in Framing content in print and on the Web, Management of a publications enterprise, Writing and Editing No Comments »

[W]hat animal psychologists call theory of mind is the ability to infer what another animal does or does not know. Baboons seem to have a very feeble theory of mind. When they cross from one island to another, ever fearful of crocodiles, the adults will often go first, leaving the juveniles fretting at the water’s edge. However much the young baboons call, their mothers never come back to help, as if unable to divine their children’s predicament.But people have a very strong ability to recognize the mental states of others, and this could have prompted a desire to communicate that drove the evolution of language. ‘If I know you don’t know something, I am highly motivated to communicate it,’ Dr. [Robert] Seyfarth said.

How can we use this tantalizing observation (reported in the New York Times) to communicate more successfully? In particular, how can we know if someone doesn’t know something? Partly, it depends on age.

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Posted in Audience research and strategic planning No Comments »

“Put that coffee down!! Coffee’s for closers only.… [Y]ou’ve got, all you got, just one week to regain your jobs, starting tonight…. Oh, have I got your attention now? Good. ‘Cause we’re adding a little something to this month’s sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anyone want to see second prize? Second prize’s a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired. You get the picture?”

Ah, employee communications. While Alec Baldwin’s victims in the film Glengarry Glen Ross happen to be real estate agents, a lot of other companies also think that motivation is about carrots and sticks, period.

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Posted in Management of a publications enterprise, Persuasion No Comments »