Imagine going back to visit your high school, walking into the cafeteria and seeing all your old friends, sitting at your old table, still arguing about the same things they were arguing about so many decades ago. That’s the way I feel about “digital magazines.” Can we please get over it already! Magazines have been …
Usually I write about professional publishing, but from time to time I take a break and talk about self publishing, which is my hobby. The question at hand is how an author can use his Facebook feed to his advantage, without trying to sell all his friends and family. I’m one of those guys who’s …
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I recently attended a SIPA conference where three talented, intelligent, experienced publishing professionals gave three fairly different perspectives on “content marketing.” Each of them had very interesting things to say. One focused on “purposeful content” — that you should have a goal for anything that you write. Another focused on “story,” and how businesses should …
Continue reading ‘Does “content marketing” actually mean anything?’ »
I admit I’m a bit of a curmudgeon, so take this with a grain of salt. When someone says “marketing automation,” it usually annoys me. That’s mostly because people speak of “marketing automation” as if it’s a new concept — as if we’ve only recently been able to configure systems to automate messages or content …
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Just a short one this week, folks. I think we need to stop talking about “the digital transformation.” It sounds too much like “the death of print,” or “everything’s going digital,” and all that misguided talk. If you’ve been paying attention to the publishing industry for the past few years you know that’s not how …
Continue reading ‘“Digital revolution” or “digital transformation”?’ »
At first I was going to name this post, “How publishers can beat the Evil Empire,” but that title requires some explanation. “The Evil Empire” is my label for the big platforms — Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, mostly. I like each one of those companies for certain things. I love Amazon prime, for example, …
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If you’re a publisher, I’m sure you’ve been tempted to post your valuable content on Facebook to get more audience. That’s short-term thinking. Don’t do it. Let Facebook keep the cat videos and the hashtag activism, and let publishers create their own communities around meaningful, professional content. “Facebook … gets an unequal share of the …
Continue reading ‘Publishers: quit being suckers, before it’s too late’ »
This is a very interesting and challenging article. What’s Really Killing Digital Media: The Tyranny Of The Impression. If you support your content with online ads, that means you have to play the ad impression game. You need to re-jigger your content to get more ad impressions for each word for each visitor. What does …
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This article — Publishers: Weigh The Risks Of Platform Content Distribution — makes a lot of good points about the dangers publishers face when they put their content on a platform. Unfortunately, it starts off with a very common but fundamentally misleading argument. First, nearly two-thirds of digital media time spent in the US is …
Continue reading ‘The illogical thinking that plagues digital publishing’ »
… but some tech companies have tried. That’s part of the message in this fantastic article: Everything the tech world says about marketing is wrong. I’ve explored the same general theme before, but Samuel Scott has gone wide and deep with it, explaining that analytics and algorithms can’t replace creativity and basic marketing know-how, and …
Continue reading ‘Marketing can’t be replaced by software …’ »