Rudolf McDonald, CEO of a mid-sized software product firm, is accustomed to receiving his weekly automobile-focused magazine, through post or courier, every month for the past ten years. This decade-old practice came to an end last week, when McDonald decided to opt for an online subscription that was much cheaper than the print version. Moreover, the publisher rewarded him by giving him access to three more editions for free. McDonald is not the only such subscriber; he, like scores of other subscribers, is displaying traits that have awakened publishers from the comfort zones of their huge subscriber bases. The reasons are simple – readers now can get the same information online in a much faster way, in greater depth and more importantly with ‘interactivity’, served by the humble but ubiquitous link.
Studies Will Show…
A Pew Research Center study confirms this trend. For instance, the study notices that a decade ago, just one in fifty Americans got news with some regularity from what was then a brand new source – the Internet. Today, nearly a full third of this audience regularly get news online. More recently, in November 2007, the Audit Bureau of Circulation, an independent organization that monitors the newspaper industry in the US, reported that average daily paid newspaper circulation had declined 2.6 percent in the six months that ended September 30, compared with the previous year.
Smart publishers who have seen their audience base decline significantly are now aiming to reverse their losses with the help of online editions. As publishers say, “Pixel space is definitely more profitable than paper”. While the debate about the future of print publishing will continue to rage on, it is perhaps important to ponder that the value of content has not diminished; consumers still expect the same - and perhaps better quality of - content. Users today expect more interactivity and take pride in giving opinions on topics they consider close to their hearts.
Engaging Users
The Web is no more just a platform for information exchange. In its current avatar, the Web is shaped by Web 2.0 principles and is a living organism linking multiple people and their emotions. And the tools and technologies that are contributing to this immense collaborative space include blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, podcasts, mashups and more. Some of the best known Web 2.0 companies include pioneers like Google, Yahoo, Amazon and eBay, and the newer crop includes Flickr, Del.icio.us, JotSpot, Writely, Feedburner, Digg and 37Signals.
User participation is key: and can be seen from the number of networks that users propagate on their own. Technorati for instance, tracks over 50 million blogs, while on an average day, users upload more than 60,000 videos on YouTube. The drift is clear – the audience will decide the value of the content. While traditional publishing used to rely on customer feedback forms running twice a year, or hiring audit firms to validate their customer base, in the online world, the judgment is blunt and quick. Publishers can immediately understand the pulse of the audience by going through comments or ratings.
Web 2.0: an Opportunity or a Challenge?
Web 2.0 technologies are both a dream and a nightmare for publishers. User participation helps bring in fresh content and more traffic; it also helps extend the reach of the brand beyond what can be achieved via conventional means. But it poses massive challenges for publishers. It is common for users now to demand targeted and personalized interactions with the Web sites with which they interact.
Common questions that emerge include:
• How do you design, develop and maintain different personalized digital assets?
• For instance, if you are a television business channel, how do you ensure that the viewer has a choice of viewing a video of an interview, as well reading a transcript of the same interview?
• How do you manage unstructured and ad-hoc content creation by users?
• How do you moderate information posted by readers?
• How do you measure the popularity of content by taking note of user feedback such as comments, ratings or subscriptions?
For publishers grappling with the challenges of managing and updating content in addition to requirements of usability, design and information architecture, survival in the Web 2.0 world scales up these challenges to a new level.
While the traditional print world can allow publishers some luxury in terms of time, the Web 2.0 era offers no time even to pause. It is a period where everything must be done quickly and now.
How Can a CMS help?
For publishers, it is important to offer a consistent and professional experience on their Web sites – irrespective of the number of content assets or mediums. This is where Content Management Systems (CMS) can enable publishers to maintain consistency across different digital assets of their Web site so that branding and design are controlled to the level desired (with style sheets, templates and more), regardless of who is responsible for the creation of the actual content.
Besides enabling quicker publishing of content, a CMS can help quickly add components on a Web page displaying an article. For instance, publishers can enhance content by asking readers to provide feedback through built-in user polls, feedback questions, and automatic generation of related news links based on keywords. Further, images or articles can be archived and used as valuable resource for readers and journalists. Depending on the quality of the content, a publisher can even set up rules in a CMS to define paid or free content for certain stories.
Content creation to cater to multiple mediums and audiences is also simpler to manage, as a CMS allows publishing of multiple forms of content from a single source. Blogs posted can have detailed workflows for approvals for content or comments that are posted by end users. When integrated with a CRM or Web analytics solution, a CMS can automatically push popular content. For example, a CMS can automatically push a popular article that has received the maximum number of ratings to the homepage. While the data of the maximum number of downloads is provided by the Web analytics solution, the CMS acts upon this data based on a defined workflow that can be flexibly modified. Accordingly, different metrics can be defined by the organization in a content management system’s workflow, and the Web site can be quickly modified as per business needs.
For taking advantage of new mediums such as RSS feeds and podcasts, a CMS can provide tremendous benefits. A CMS can be used for automatically publishing content as RSS feeds. Further, visitors to a Web site can personalize their RSS feeds by defining a keyword or phrase. When new content related to the keyword or phrase appears on the Web site, personalized content is automatically pushed.
A CMS can also facilitate the publishing of digital assets such as audio and video files, and simplify the process by which a customer publishes the XML associated with the podcast RSS feed. As a result, users can easily subscribe to podcasts. Most importantly, all versions are kept, so that customers have a complete and centralized archive of all the podcasts that are issued. When you have a CMS with a combination that delivers powerful content management, workflow, and publishing features, it gives publishers a simple but effective way to centralize single publishing tasks into multiple outputs with one click, and measure the effectiveness of each content asset.
The SaaS Option
CMS offered Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is fast breaking ground as an affordable and feature-rich option, and publishers would be well served with a hosted solution. With no hardware to buy or software to install, the publisher organization can focus on what it does best – generate content – and leave the entire task of managing, maintaining and upgrading the CMS to the vendor.
SaaS CMS is deployed much quicker than traditional systems, ensuring that publishers undergo minimum, if any, downtime during transition. Premier SaaS vendors such as CrownPeak also offer CMS solutions pre-integrated with top-rung Web analytics, and take the responsibility of integrating the CMS with existing third-party applications and proprietary tools.
What Lies Ahead?
To succeed in the new era, publishers must understand that speed and ability to evolve with the changing tastes of the audience is crucial to thrive in a challenging market. The same forces of the Internet that have threatened the very survival of publishers can be used instead as an opportunity to expand the subscriber base and create relationships that go beyond what traditional techniques can achieve. A CMS undoubtedly is one of the best tools that publishers can use to explore the constantly growing base of online subscribers, where boundaries of growth are virtually limitless.
For more info: http://www.crownpeak.com
