Insight from the Mequoda Summit Boston 2010
Three panelists listed a series of publishing mistakes recently at the Mequoda Summit Boston 2010. As we all make mistakes, it’s very valuable to know about issues online publishers face from time to time, and how those issues can be resolved.
The panelists who took place in this session were Jeff Lapin of Farm Progress, Bob Brady of Business & Legal Resources, and Alan Bergstein of Energy Central.
Thankfully most problems have solutions. The following examples show problems online publishers have faced and the solutions that have fixed the issues.
Online Publishing Problem #1: A lack of focus on search engines like Google. Within this problem, 95% of the pages of this website were not recognized by search engines.
The Solution: The publisher moved portions of topics and pages in front of the pay wall. Conversion mechanisms were then positioned around free portions of articles. This helped pages get ranked by Google and now the publisher is expecting to see more revenue due to increased traffic.
Online Publishing Problem #2: Due to competitive environments, the problem of creating an environment of continuing education arose. Many content producers may not be web savvy, which aided in the problem.
The Solution: Setting up staff discussions and workshops about the importance of reach became the solution to the problem. The more web-savvy employees could share their knowledge with those lacking the knowledge. An important aspect of these discussions should involve SEO and how fundamental it is to online publishers. For best results, have these discussions regularly and only take between 30 and 45 minutes of them so no one gets burnt out on them.
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Online Publishing Problem #3: With a focus on print and live events, there was a delayed website richness that resulted in low website traffic.
The Solution: To solution this problem, a portal was created which aggregated content and RSS feeds that helped deliver local content in sync with local brands. Farm Progress, the company that experienced this problem and determined a solution, began leveraging content from other sources and presented this story to the media pre-launch.
These three presenters are successful today because they came across problems and were able to find solutions for them.
In the coming weeks I will be releasing more examples of online publishing mistakes and solutions for them. Stay tuned for more valuable information.
And if you have a specific online publishing problem that you’re looking for a solution to, please feel free to leave a comment at the end of this post.
