3 Online Publishing Strategies and Free Software to prepare you for next year
It’s September 2007 and 2008 online publishing budgets are being prepared far and wide.
How will you budget online expenses and revenues for 2008?
To give you a hand, download the most recent version of the free Mequoda Online Publishing Model and use it to help predict the future of your online publishing business.
As websites proliferate and user expectations steadily increase, your online publishing strategy needs to play a bigger and better role in your business. Your brand’s website network needs to become the nexus of your interaction with customers—a place where they can find information about everything you do and purchase every product you offer.
If you already excel the areas described below, you are in the top one percent of all online publishers. If you fall short in any of these areas, its time to get moving as the bar will only go up in 2008.
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So answer these questions honestly…
Do You Offer Users Many Products on Many Platforms?
The strategy of offering users many products on many platforms can be viewed in two ways. First and foremost, it’s important to recognize the Internet as a place to recycle, reuse and republish information in many different formats. This involves taking the same information and turning it into any format a user could possibly want—from e-books to streaming video to email newsletters. Publishers not only save on material costs, but the same information is being cheaply repackaged and sold in a multitude of formats to maximize customer satisfaction and revenue.
The second way to deploy content, on a slightly larger scale, is by using the power of an established brand to successfully launch a TV show, radio show or syndicated newspaper column. This strategy allows traditional print publishers to extend their brands to a larger audience and ultimately increase revenue and profit.
Do You Offer Users a Free, Robust Online Content Experience?
The ultimate success of a publisher’s multiplatform strategy will depend almost entirely on the effectiveness of their website, or network of websites. Because the Internet is the one platform that is ubiquitous, users expect to find everything about a company’s offerings online, 24/7, 365 days a year.
Users also expect new and fresh content to be found daily, if not hourly or even more frequently. A robust website with lots of free content and clear, intuitive navigation is absolutely critical to success. Tons of valuable, fresh content will keep users returning to the site(s) again and again, allowing a publisher more opportunity to cross-sell them into other product platforms, which leads to our final point about the importance of the Internet in multiplatform publishing success.
Do You Offer Users a Personalized Marketing Experience?
Online, users expect to find air times and episode recaps for TV shows. They expect to find additional magazine or newsletter branded content, as well as an easy way to subscribe or renew their offline subscriptions. Users expect to use the Internet to buy hard copy books, or download ebooks and special reports. They expect to request more information or register online for an offline event or service. Implemented correctly, a publisher’s website or network of websites should become a digital marketing machine and act as the basis for a publisher’s entire online strategy.
A publisher’s online destination must have a specific purpose and unique functionality designed to serve the same audience in a variety of ways. Those who can answer “yes” to all of the above report online revenue growth rates of 35 percent to 65 percent for 2007 over 2006. Some who do not still report high online revenue growth for 2007 – but will it continue for 2008 if they can’t soon answer “yes” to all three questions? No one ever said this was going to be easy, but in times of rapid change there is much opportunity for those who lead.
How much revenue and profit will your organization generate online in 2008?
