Niche and Local Will Grow in 2010

I hesitate to climb aboard the 2010 Prediction Train, so let me just say that – amid much handwringing in the newspaper, magazine, and direct mail industries -- niche and local seem to be carving a spot. Meaning what?

An article two weeks ago in the Baltimore Sun reported that “Niche E-Newsletters are Healthy and Happy.” What the author, Gus G. Sentementes, was talking about are centrally-produced, but niche-slanted, electronic newsletters like those produced by SmartBrief. I first became familiar with SmartBrief six or seven years ago, when I noticed that the International Franchise Association was sending out a fabulous electronic newsletter every week. How were they doing such a professional job with no increase in staff? By signing on with a publisher that figured out how to mass-produce industry specific electronic newsletters, that's how! Today, Sentementes notes that SmartBrief has 100 employees, does 150 email newsletters, and has been profitable since 2002.

Into that smart mix, I now must toss publications like Local Kicks, a terrific e-newspaper that serves the Alexandria area in Virginia. Not only does this little newspaper have terrific journalism and an appealing “insider” writing style, it seems to enjoy its share of advertising, too.

Local goes beyond publishing, of course. Websites like LocalHarvest encourage people to buy food from local farmers, with great listings of “where and how.” But publishers also are doing well with the local angle. Researcher/consultant Greg Sterling reports that even Google is interested in local. Sterling also says, “..2010 is going to be all about leveraging social media in the local space.”

The best evidence may lie in the 2009 success of Groupon -- the “deal-of-the-day” website that is localized to major markets in the United States. In early December, Chicago-based Groupon got a $30 million financing infusion, and “the company is going gangbusters,” according to TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington.

There's no real surprise here: The Internet both decentralizes the outreach, and lowers distribution cost... which is why smart publishers will find more ways to capitalize on niche and local in 2010.

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

So Far, No Information Model Beats Print Because ...

A really excellent blog post by Bruce Hendrickson addressed the certain death of print publications – trade magazines, specifically.

No denying Bruce is right, and he hit upon something that’s been troubling Marketing Brillo for some time. With print evaporating into the ether, what will become of information communications generally, and business communications specifically?

At this point, major newspapers are the only business communicators who seem to be “getting it right.” Perhaps that's because communicators like The New York Times, The Washington Post, the LA Times are on-screen replicas of their print selves (only better). How so?

At major online newspaper sites, information presentation features the layout readers love. Like their print counterparts, the information is categorized under easy-to-find tabs and indices. Articles have bylines and terse headlines; they are carefully researched and full of facts, parsed interviews, and background references. Articles are beautifully written and as long as they need to be. Best of all, articles proceed from an understandable point A, to a conclusive Point B. Truly .. can we yet say the same for most electronic publications?

Reality is, electronic newsletters and publications, generally, are still climbing all over themselves to figure out what they should look like. Should they be one short email with two-sentence headers, linked to a longer article? Should they offer the first paragraph, and then link? Should they have photos or no photos? Should they include “read more” jumps or not? Nobody knows for sure, because nobody agrees.

In addition to going electronic, some organizations are eschewing editorial totally, and switching to video to communicate with readers. Have you ever watched the stuff some of these videophiles are putting out? For one thing – unlike journalists who make it their living to write well -- the people featured in videos are generally amateurs in front of a camera... which means their thinking may be fuzzy and the content may not get to the point quickly enough. Moreover, from the title and the intro (which is usually infused with upfront advertising), you don’t have any idea whether the content will be good, bad, or horrible. In fact, until you’ve already invested time, there’s no gauging the value of what’s “in there” at all. Not so, with The New York Times. In fact, not so with any print publication. These you can evaluate in a glance.

I hope I’m not one of the ‘monkey-fisted” folks Bruce was talking about in his article. I know he's right about the future of high-overhead print: It’s the old architecture and it’s going to crumble.

What I am saying is that nobody -- yet -- has certainty what the new architecture should look like. In figuring that out, I hope we analyze carefully the underlying value that most information seekers find in print.

Stats do report that people, generally, are watching more video every day. But, when people want informed opinion, apparently, they still are reading gray matter like Wikipedia and online newspapers and blogs – especially blogs. They also are searching out hefty online articles and white papers—the stuff that’s not necessarily pretty, or short, or entertaining … but IS where the content meets the seeker.

Personally, Marketing Brillo loves the “thumbability” of print. For busy people, that must surely be a key feature of any new information architecture. Digital magazines are very good at allowing readers to quickly flip through content, so perhaps there's a model there.

Entertainment is a whole different subject, of course. But, if information and analysis are the point, well, the easy-digest that’s trending now may not work so well in the long-term. As we adopt the new architecture, I'm betting (hoping) we'll figure out how to include some elements of the 550-plus-year old print model.

p.s. In the meantime, check out what print can still do to knock off your socks.

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

Podcasts: The Under-Appreciated -- But Powerful -- Communications Tool

Gene Del Polito, president of the Association for Postal Commerce and very likely the direct mail industry’s premier postal expert, has a podcast. Gene has been doing his podcast since October 2006. Over the years, Gene has interviewed a host of experts from all sides of postal matters: USPS representatives, mailers, Postal Union reps, Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) members, etc. Gene’s podcasts aren't a scheduled item, but always appear when there’s something important to talk about.

The useful thing about this industry podcast -- and effective podcasts generally -- is that Gene interacts with interviewees as though the listener knows very little about postal matters (for example, he asks interviewees to define their acronyms). This sensitivity to listeners defines a good podcast. But don’t take my word for it ...

Software developer Bruce Eckel who blogs at Computing Thoughts lists dos and don’ts for podcasting. I was struck by Bruce’s tip: Don’t use Video if Audio is Enough .. which got me to wondering why more marketers don’t do podcasting.

Seasoned (since 2003, for heaven’s sake) podcaster Nick Marino’s post at AudioShocker partially answered my question. As with video production, sound is not only a critical element of quality, it’s one of the most difficult to control. If you're still interested in giving this under-used strategy a shot, though, start here, with John Nolt’s “Podcasting Pointers.”

How many marketing-related podcasts are out there? An Odeo search of the words “direct marketing” turned up 881 podcasts, but almost nothing of interest to marketing professionals. In addition to Gene's, Marketing Brillo suggests the following five podcasts for a serious marketer's iPod.

• Like all things Duct Tape, John Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing podcast has the pulse (and makes the money).
• The B2B Marketing Podcast from Voices in Business features interviews with top business professionals.
• CC Chapman’s Managing the Gray podcast looks at new (and social) media.
• Bob Knorpp’s The BeanCast covers the ad industry (and its Mad Men and Women).
• John Wall and Christopher Penn’s Marketing Over Coffee podcast takes a broad view.

Looks like there’s room for more great marketing podcasts. Thinking about doing it? For a free primer on podcast marketing, download Christopher Penn’s ebook.

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

Business Video Grows, Improves, Advances, and Influences

Last week, Mashable featured some eye-popping numbers about video use. To wit: 84.4% of U.S. Internet users watched at least one online video in October and the average person watched 10.8 hours of video. Indeed, online video continues to grow and the end is nowhere in site. In fact, video is fast on its way to becoming the radical (for now, but not for long) human learning tool.

BVo supports that notion. Created in the spring of 2008 in association with IBM, BVo founder Anthony Gell says: ".. quite frankly, we got tired of scrolling through online video sites looking for business inspiration, only to find some very strange homemade movies. So we launched The Business Voice (BVo) - world leaders at your desk."

BVo interviews business leaders and vlogs the clips. American Express Open Forum does much the same thing. Both are excellent learning tools, well-funded, and exceptionally well produced. Efforts like these are raising the bar on online education. Expect more of the same.

-- scrubbed by marketing brillo

Dear Info Manager: Your New Job Is Video, Concept Is King, and Here's What You Need

If you're a marketing or communications manager, information video is about to become part of your job responsibility. Here's the why, how, and who.

Why? Most people are read-up and fed up.
Lucy Kellaway writing in the U.K.’s Financial Times says employees faced with information overload are stuffing their ears, closing the blinds, and shutting down. “... the written word has lost almost all its power. No one reads e-mails any more - with the exception of those from the boss. Messages from anyone else are either deleted unread or given a cursory glance and then ignored.”

Kellaway says management, too, is getting rid of information. “... companies have decided to deal with too much information by giving up any attempt to manage it on the grounds that to do so costs too much. Since the recession began, many have closed their libraries and taken the axe to their knowledge management divisions, set up with such pride and optimism barely a decade ago."

But people still want to watch. In fact, they want to watch more.
The buzz that prompted Kellaway’s article emanated from Carol Bartz, president and CEO of Yahoo, who contributes to The Economists’s “The World in 2010.” Bartz says, “That’s why the greatest mandate for leadership in business is the ability to cut through the information clutter and make clear decisions without apology.” How to cut through the clutter? Bartz alludes to video “snacks,” calling video the “cornerstone” of Yahoo’s strategy.

At first glance, I wondered if Bartz was snacking on something more potent than video, but then I remembered that a colleague told me her middle school niece goes first to YouTube, then to Wikipedia, in researching any paper for school. For information ... first to YouTube! Wow.

Today's volume of information demands that users must both see and hear in order to process. For information architects and managers of all ilk, the message becomes an irresistible mandate to evolve written stories and messages to visual stories and messages.

In short, we're moving from a written world to a video world, and nothing can change that. So -- if you're an information or marketing manager today, what is the mindset that will take you to the next step? That would be the ability to think.

To conquer, conceptualize.
Effective video demands that we conceptualize first. Concept in hand, we can execute the steps that go into effective video -- research, locate, listen, see, coagulate, film, process, edit, and -- ultimately -- communicate.

The film documentarian -- that dedicated man or woman who has something to say and follows it to the ends of the earth -- personifies the new communications model for information video. Think of The Discovery Channels amazing "Planet Earth" series; Ken Burns Civil War masterpiece on PBS, Michael Moore's "Capitalism" grappling with complex economic theories. These are massive undertakings of research, interview, selection, and presentation that make The Watergate Papers pale in comparison. All are draped in detail, but heavy on concept.

Bottom line: Concept Is King.
If this level of information delivery is where snack video is going -- and surely it is-- we're also talking about new definitions for career genius and a great many new jobs. Here's the management team you'll need for effective information video. Some of these folks may already be on staff, others not; plus, any one of these folks probably needs myriad assistants:

• Leader (you?): The One who can conceptualize a project, develop a message, build the team, and sign-off along the way.
• Executionary (production person?): The One who can take a plan, oversee the team, devise and enforce schedules, crack whips.
• Information Architect (writer?): The One who can string together the narrative, find and coagulate bits of message, and schlog through raw footage for "that's it!"
• Film Maker (could be a designer, but you likely don't have this one yet...): The One who can appreciate the message, tell people where to stand, and get great-looking film into the camera.
• Editor (another newbie ..): The One who "gets the message" and puts it together for maximum effect.

-- scrubbed Marketing Brillo

Twitter: Follow Friday's Mentor of Choice

Marketing Brillo primarily follows marketing, PR, digital, video, social media, and technology experts. A few of these folks are big names like @louisgray and @rogerdooley, but, increasingly, follows of choice include the somewhat Lesser Knowns who recognize, track, vet, and happily share the "right stuff." For that reason, Twitter has become Marketing Brillo's ultimate career mentor.

Today's sampling?

• A free webinar on SEO via @mvolpe, Hubspot.
• Continuing posts from Thursday’s rockin’ Webinar on PR strategies via #PRWeb.
• “The Art of the Paragraph,” pointers from @copyblogger.
• For a nostalgic Friday Sigh, @steverubel “Ten Common Phrases That Could Soon Be History.” http://bit.ly/fgZ5r
•#TwitTip How To Squeeze Every Last Drop of SEO Juice from Your Twitter Page. http://bit.ly/2ccxFK
• @JohnFMoore: Social Conversation Monitoring http://bit.ly/3JIhBx
• via @DallasAdMan, The Ten Uglies of Project Management http://is.gd/4ZGkV (love this one.. Retweet, retweet)
• via @wordpost: "Why Won’t Bloggers Dig Into Detail?" by @davidspinks - http://bit.ly/1S8LzG
• For pure Machead rumor mongering and rumpkicking, @5great tweets this: http://bit.ly/333ryS
• To sober up, @gleonhard says: Here is a guy you need to pay attention to: @Umairh - HarvardBusiness.org http://ow.ly/E20c Edge Economy and other wisdoms

No way to keep up with all this stuff alone. Thank you Twitter Mentors, one and all.

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

Will Vlogging Replace Blogging? Will Actors Replace Writers? Maybe.

Some people would say Blog = info, and Vlog = entertainment. Loïc Le Meur, CEO of Seesmic, doesn't care to split that hair.

On November first, Le Meur posted “30 Predictions for the Future of Twitter.” In the post, he used both blogging and vlogging formats. Check his post for a great predictive wrap-up that shows how written bulleted points can play nicely with longer, more detailed video (19 minutes worth, actually).

One of BusinessWeek’s “25 Most Influential People on the Web,” Le Meur writes, “I am blogging every day a video on loic.tv about (almost) everything I do as I start Seesmic. I also constantly post short thoughts to twitter and often my pictures on Flickr.”

Highlights of Le Mur's view of the future of Twitter include:

• Twitter will still be dominant
 in status updates;
 it's the motherboard to which we plug in.
• Twitter might replace Chat for many people.
• Vertical Twitter apps 
will start to appear; Stocktweets is the first one.
• There will be less and less bullshit 
in public events and in general.

Gotta love that last one. As always, don’t miss the comments.

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo