Traditional media — publishers of newspapers, magazines and other print publications — have had at least a decade or more to get used to the idea of the web and the disruptive effect it is having on their businesses, but many continue to drag their feet when it comes to adapting. Some experiment with paywalls, while others hope that iPad apps will be the solution to their problems, now that Apple allows them to charge users directly through the tablet. But the lessons of how to adapt to the web and take advantage of it are not complicated, if media outlets are willing to listen. And these lessons don’t just apply to mainstream media either — anyone whose business involves putting content online needs to think hard about applying them.
Newspapers in particular continue to come under pressure from the digital world: eMarketer recently estimated that online advertising will eclipse newspaper advertising this year for the first time — a further sign of the declining importance of newspapers in the online commercial ecosystem, where Facebook and Twitter are getting a lot more interest from advertisers than any traditional publication. Online, newspapers and magazines are just another source of content and pageviews or clickthroughs — they are no longer the default place for brand building or awareness advertising, nor are they even one of the most popular.
Rupert Murdoch, among others, seems to believe that paywalls are the route to success online, and recently installed one at the Times of London and the Sunday Times in England. But paywalls are are mostly a rearguard action that newspapers and magazines are fighting to try and keep some of their subscribers paying for the product, rather than just getting it for free through the web. The editors of the Times have said that they are happy with the response to their paywall, even though their readership dropped by more than 99 percent following the introduction of subscriptions for the website. That suggests it is far more important to the paper to keep even a few thousand paying readers rather than appealing to the vast number of potential readers who will now never see the site’s content.
It’s true that the Wall Street Journal and the Economist, among others, have been successful in getting readers and users to pay for their content — but it’s also true that not every publication can be the Wall Street Journal or the Economist. Whether you are a newspaper or magazine publisher, or whether you have some other business that depends on online publishing of content in some way, here are some of the lessons that you need to absorb to take advantage of the web:
* Forget about being a destination: In the old days, it was enough to “build it and they will come,” and so everyone from AOL and Yahoo to existing publishers of content tried to make their sites a destination for users, complete with walls designed to keep them from leaving. But Google showed that successful businesses can be built by actually sending people away, and others — including The Guardian newspaper in Britain — have shown that value can be generated by distributing your content to wherever people are, via open APIs and other tools, rather than expecting them to come to you.
* Don’t just talk about being social: Social media is a hot term, but the reality is that all media is becoming social, and that includes advertising and other forms of media content. Whether you are writing newspaper stories or publishing blog posts on your company blog, you will get feedback from readers and/or users — and you had better be in a position to respond, and then take advantage of the feedback you get. If you don’t, or if you block your employees from using Twitter and Facebook and other such tools, you will not get any benefit, and you will be worse off as a result.
* Get to know your community: This is something that new media outlets such as The Huffington Post have done very well — reaching out to readers and users, providing a number of different ways for them to share and interact with the site. News sites like Toronto-based OpenFile are designed around the idea that every member of a community has something to offer, and that allowing these ideas into the process via “crowdsourcing” can generate a lot of value. Even some older media players such as the Journal Register newspaper chain have been getting this message, and opening up what they call a “community newsroom” as a way of building bridges with readers.
* Use all the tools available to you: Large media entities — and large companies of all kinds — often have a “not invented here” mentality that requires them to build or develop everything in house. But one of the benefits of the distributed web is that there are other services you can integrate with easily in order to get the benefit of their networks, without having to reinvent the wheel. Groupon is a great example: many publishers and websites are implementing “daily deal” offers through a partnership with Groupon, while others are using a white-label service from a competitor called Tippr. Take a look around you and make use of what you can. David Weinberger, author of the Cluetrain Manifesto, called the web “small pieces, loosely joined.”
* Don’t pave the cart paths: Media outlets, including a number of leading newspapers and magazines, seem to feel that the ideal way of using a new technology such as the iPad is to take existing content from their websites or print publications and simply dump it on the device — in much the same way that many publications did with CD-ROMs when they first arrived on the scene. Why bother putting your content on the iPad if you aren’t going to take advantage of the features of the device, including the ability to share content? And yet, many major media apps provide no way for users to share or even link to the content they provide.
* Be prepared to “burn the boats”: Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen wrote about how media entities in some cases should “burn the boats,” as ** is said to have done in order to show that he was fully committed to his cause and would never retreat. The idea being that if you are still mostly focused on your existing non-web operations, and always see those as the most important, then you will inevitably fail to be as aggressive as you need to be when it comes to competing with online-only counterparts, and that could spell doom. The Christian Science Monitor and several other papers shut down their print operations completely and went web only. Obviously that isn’t for everyone, but sometimes drastic action is required.
It seems unlikely that Rupert Murdoch will ever be convinced that he has made a mistake with his paywalls, despite a track record of poor judgment calls such as the purchase of MySpace. And other newspapers and publishers of all kinds are free to make similar mistakes. But if you are engaged in a business that involves content and you want to remain competitive online, you have to become just as web-focused and adaptable as your online-only counterparts — or you will wind up cornering the market in things that most people no longer want, or at least no longer want to pay for.