thinking-about-business

Vids! What’s the matter with vids these days?

Mon, 17 May 2010 17:53:17 +0100

Don’t magazine editors watch TV? Having viewed the videos they produce for their magazines, I conclude they do not. My chief complaints: The videos are too long. They consist only of talking heads. They are not compelling. They are boring. And sloppy. I’ve seen misspellings of proper names (companies and individuals) in the titles. How’s that for establishing authority?

Why are print editors, who are so good at telling stories on glossy paper, so bad at telling a story in a different medium? I’m going to single out one publication, only because it should know better.

Folio: is the business magazine of magazines. It, of all publications, has wide access to the best practices of the industry. So I expect better from it. But Folio: falls short (far short) with its video introducing 40 influential publishing executives. The video, at 8 minutes, 30 seconds, is too long. I don’t want to watch nearly 9 minutes of a talking head. Do you?

The editors needed to break this one long video into shorter chapters. Second, the video gives no visual relief. It’s talking heads all the time. TV news and documentary producers know their medium. Editors can learn from them. Watch and deconstruct a news broadcast.

Here are some techniques I gleaned from television to create better videos:
• Use music and titles to introduce the piece.
• Cut away from the talking head from time to time.
• Use bullet points to summarize what the interview subject just said.
• Change the camera angle.
• Use “B” roll. These could be still photos sexed up with the Ken Burns effect.
• Put music underneath the audio.
• Use wipes, dissolves and other transitions.
• Keep it short. Like 60 to 90 seconds.

I follow the gift and furniture magazines, which have produced plenty of mediocre videos. But I like what Furniture/Today has done at trade shows with its “man in the street” videos that ask show attendees their opinions about products and business.

I believe in using video for magazine websites. I’ve just started a video channel for a magazine I edit. My body of work includes content ranging from 6 seconds to about 2 minutes. In the past I’ve shot video with my digital camera. These days I’m experimenting with FlipVideo. The camera comes with its own editing software, which isn’t very robust. You can only add opening and closing titles (but you can’t change the font or face). It offers a limited selection of music. It suffices for trade show coverage if you want to edit and post quickly.

We post some videos on our blog with embedded links to our YouTube channel. Each video on YouTube includes a synopsis and links. I’ve tried to optimize them for search so our website and blog receive hits. So how am I doing? I invite you my screening room. Send me your comments.

Trade Show Exhibitors: Think Like A Newsman

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:08:17 +0100

Trade shows and social media are made for each other.

Shows consist of you, your product and your customers. Social media allow you to share this information.

It's important to document the event. Besides your booth, the one key piece of equipment to take is a digital camera with video and voice recording capabilities. I've covered hundreds of trade shows from the media side. My digital camera has become as indispensable as pen and paper.

With this camera, you are creating the raw material for your social media and traditional marketing efforts. You will use the photos, videos and sounds you record for:

Facebook
Your website
Your blog
Twitter
Flickr (or other photo-sharing site)
Press releases
Internal sales presentations
E-mail newsletters
Brochures
Advertising

What should you shoot? You have to think like a newsman. Ask yourself: What interests my customers? What do I want my sales staff to know about my products? What story do I want to tell the media?

Assign someone on your staff to be the official photographer. Create a list of shots you must have. This might include: booth set up; products; ribbon cutting; award presentations (to customers or to staff); and customer interaction.

Think about what each of the social medium needs; that is, photos for Flickr and press releases; video for blog and website.

If you plan ahead, you will return from the trade show with six-months worth of material. The next step is to share that information.

Feeling overwhelmed? I'm available to help tell your story. Give me a call.

Business lessons

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 03:18:34 +0100

I have edited business magazines covering real estate, food & beverage, travel and tourism, retailing and construction. I’ve interviewed hundreds of business owners and executives. Here are some universal business lessons I’ve learned:

1. Outsource what is not your specialty. Homebuilders outsourced just about everything—architecture, construction, merchandising, and land development—to concentrate on developing product, pricing it right and selling it.

2. Stay current, or better yet, just be slightly ahead of the curve. Home furnishings retailers always look for what’s new. When they sell out of a product, many tend not to re-order. Instead, they buy something different. Customers tire of seeing the same old thing. Shopping is all about the hunt. Discovering excites the customer.

3. Run your business for the convenience of the customer, not your staff. I learned this from a hotelier, who talked of business travelers leaving the hotel early in the morning and returning late to find the health club closed, the business center closed and the restaurant closed, all because those service centers operated on a 9-to-5 schedule. When he changed the hours of these amenities, customers were happier. They could use the services on their schedule, not the hotel’s.

4. Be a neat freak at your workplace. I walked with many hoteliers through their properties. Without fail, I saw them pick up scraps of paper, rubber bands, and lint off the carpet.

5. Anticipate and communicate. Again, another lesson from a hotelier talking about a cancelled airline flight. Guests would be checking in that evening, meaning that reception had to be ready for an influx of visitors, the dining room would need to be staffed for extra diners that night and again the next morning for breakfast. Housekeeping would have more rooms to clean in the morning. Don't withhold information. Teammates need to know what is going on.

6. Give customers choices. Homebuilders know there is money in optional upgrades. Retailers do well to offer “good, better, best” choices.

7. Change because there is a good reason. A builder told me once, “We get tired of our ads before our customers do.” Don’t change your ads or your websites because you don’t like them. Change them because they aren’t working.

8. Know your costs. Builders and retailers have told me they don't know if they are profitable or not. Cash was coming in during good times, but they did not know if they were making money or losing it.

9. Offer a unique product. When I started a magazine for retailers, we didn’t want to be a “me-to” publication. I interviewed storeowners about their information needs. They told us that they needed information about wholesale prices and minimum orders.

10. Extend your brand. Hotel chains do this with limited-service, full-service and luxury properties. Publishers do this with magazines, websites, trade shows, conferences, television shows, merchandise and podcasts.

Editors Say 'No.' Publishers Say 'Yes'

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:22:49 +0100

It took me a few years to learn this, but I know it's true:

The difference between editors and sales people is that the former say "no" while the latter say "yes."
Editors say:
No. We are not going to run your press release as is.
No. We are not going to allow you to approve the story.
No. We are not going to quote you just because you're an advertiser.
No. We are not going to write about that topic because it's irrelevant to our audience.

Sales people say:
Yes. We'll put your ad far forward opposite editorial.
Yes. We'll accept your ad after the close.
Yes. We'll go off the rate card, give you the agency discount and throw in the value-add to boot.

Sales people, paid on commission, have to make things happen for their clients. They are all about saying yes. I have no quarrel with that.

Editors, on the other hand, are often put in the position of saying no. A lot. They say no to their own staff, to public relations people, to readers, and to sales people (their co-workers).

Editors have to make choices. That's editing. They have fewer pages to work with (typically 25% to 40% of the total folio). As a result they have to decide which articles to assign and how long those articles will be.

Editors are keepers of the magazine's soul and reputation. They are the readers' advocate. Editors don't gloss over bad news. Readers know the difference between an honestly written story and a puff piece.

This is not to say that editors and sales people can't work together. They do. We all clash at times. But we all want the same thing—a respected magazine. Readers want it for the articles, advertisers want it for the readership.

Keep that in mind. Sales people aren't the bad guys just because they are looking out for their clients. Neither are editors obstructionists when they say no. They are looking out for the magazine.

I originally published this essay at FOLIO:MediaPro.

Multichannel Publishing

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:31:31 +0100

Retailers have stores, store-in-stores, catalogs and websites to push their wares out to the buying public. It’s called having multiple channels.
Publishers, too, have (or should have) mulitiple methods of distribution. Here is one of the best, most-succinct explanations why:

“With the Internet, with YouTube, with TiVo, with cable TV, people are selective viewers now. There may be a group of people in Washington who watch ‘Nightline’, ‘The Daily Show’, the ‘Tonight Show’, ‘Good Morning America’, and ‘Meet the Press’, and they see Obama five times. Most people in America see him once at most . . .
People approach their news consumption the way they approach their iPod: you download the songs you like and listen to them when you want to listen to them. That infects our strategy in where the President goes and where he doesn’t.” --Dan Pfeiffer, White House communications director, quoted in “Non-Stop News” by Ken Auletta, The New Yorker, Jan. 25, 2010

B-to-B publishers of print magazines added websites long ago and more recently are using these other methods of information distribution:

Blogs
E-newsletters
Twitter accounts
Facebook fan pages
YouTube
Flickr albums
Trade shows and conferences

Most of these new media outlets are in the hands of the editorial side. I know editors who feel they are being redundant when they post the same information in five places. These editors need to re-read Pfeiffer’s point. We in the business might consume multiple media, but our audiences do not. Updating magazine articles, websites, blogs and photo albums is extra work (and sometimes tedious), but communicating through multiple channels is the nature of publishing today. You have to be there (everywhere).

One more important point: while all of these new media outlets are ideal for the editorial side of a publishing outfit, each has value for the business side, too.

Publishers, sales staff and the marketing department must do their own blogging, Twittering, newsletter writing and YouTube posting. Yes, the business side can repeat the info the editors are pumping out, but sales and marketing folk have different messages, different information and different contacts (or followers). They need to be using these new media tools themselves. Don’t know how to get started? Give me a call. We’ll talk.