Despite the persistent reports of book publishing as a failing (or flailing) industry, publishers’ best-kept secret is that there is no nail in the coffin.
I know you don’t believe me.
But maybe the people publishing those inspirational business books you like so much actually understand something about running a business.
I know they do because between the publishing clients and the tech clients, it’s not the publishers I’m worried about.
The lessons I see tech startups learning today are ones that the publishing industry imparted to me as early as 1997 when I had my first publishing job as the graphics editor for an online literary magazine called Treeline. (That was 1 year before Google launched.)
In 15 years of working in, or consulting for, the publishing industry, I have watched book publishers leverage technology to do what they have always done, which is to transform themselves and their products to meet consumer demand. Surely an industry designed to disseminate knowledge has wisdom to impart.
Here are 25 lessons I’ve learned—from publishers—about the continuity and survival of technology-enabled businesses:
Basing your business on government grants is not a revenue model.
Asking the marketing person/publicist to “see what you can do with this” after the product has been in the market and failed does not lead to success for anyone.
If you don’t have a core business, spending time on the “latest thing” is not going to improve the situation.
If you don’t pay your staff, they leave. (More important, money is not a motivating factor, rather reward and opportunity are the reasons behind why people choose to stay.)
It is smart and prudent to build supporters fast and early.
People connect to people, not to faceless corporate voices. Get your best personalities out in front of people.
Measure, learn, improve. Fast and frequently.
Belly-button gazing—or listening only to your peers who are in the same situation—does not lead to a plan of action. It feels good to bond, but you can do that in the employment line. Run with the winners. Look beyond your industry.
Being busy is ok. Being busy with the right things makes you money.
Get people to pay upfront. Use preorders to determine how much to produce and to experiment with what will stick.
Manage expectations—yours and the customers. The percentage difference between good and great sometimes only matters to you. Overachieve but don’t overextend.
Word of mouth & permission-based marketing. Sales are driven by other people talking about your stuff. Build your contacts. Reward those contacts. Make sure those contacts are the people who buy your stuff.
There’s no 4-hour work week. There is just hard work.
Needing better technology is never the root problem.
Stay hungry, but make sure you are feeding yourself.
If you don’t know who your audience is, they won’t find you.
SEO = discoverability. You need it.
If you don’t set specific, measurable goals, you won’t know if you’re winning or losing. Cost per acquisition and rate of sales growth are important metrics. Know what your growth curve looks like and how to influence it.
Know what you’re trying to achieve before picking the tools.
P&L. Break even point. Do the math. Always.
Understand the micro actions that influence the macro actions. Marketing indirectly affects sales. Know the common multi-funnel channels that lead to conversions.
If people won’t pay for your product, produce complimentary things you can sell and give the product away for free, or close to free.
Price wars are a race to the bottom. Have a plan for selective discounting that rewards your most valuable customers.
The long tail—it’s not so great if all your products are in the tail.
There are people willing to do stuff for free, you just need to tap into their motivations for doing so.
Facebook is hoping to raise $5 billion by selling shares this spring (some reports are saying $10 billion—not sure who’s right but $5 billion is cited more often). This is larger than Google’s 2004 IPO that raised $1.9 billion at a valuation of $23 billion. Speculation is that Facebook’s valuation could be as high as $75-100 billion.
Buyers got a look at the financials yesterday, which showed the company made $1 billion in profit last year. 85% of its $3.71 billion in revenue is from advertising.
Other big stats:
845 million members, and more than half (483 million) return to the site daily
Collectively, we have produced an average of 2.7 billion “Likes” and comments a day in the last 3 months of 2011 (Oct, Nov, Dec)
I suspect your company is not getting this much attention today so here’s a 1 Minute Marketing tip on increasing the visibility of your Facebook Page by linking it to your profile.
As a note, my wolf in sheep’s clothing metaphor is more to do with mistakenly trusting that your Facebook content is private, not in regards to the IPO or Facebook’s valuation.
Posted by Monique Trottier | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
In the post, we outline 5 common web design mistakes that kill search engine optimization and why teamwork among SEOs, web designers, marketers and developers is critical during a blog redesign process.
Here are 5 design mistakes to avoid:
1. High-traffic pages are removed or deleted
2. Top-level keyword terms are omitted from new copy
3. The new design does not leave enough room for copy
4. The beautiful design takes longer to load
5. CMS changes affect URLs
More specifically, according to a new report from the CMO Council (PDF) when respondents were asked about customer service online. One-third of respondents (33%) said they will post on a brand’s Facebook page when they need to communicate with the brand (while only 12% will tweet). When connecting with a brand online for customer service issues, 47% (nearly half) of respondents expect a response within 24 hours; 22% expect a response immediately, and 19% expect a response within an hour.
So what do you do when you have a customer service question on Facebook that you can’t answer?
Follow the 3Ts of online customer service:
1. Provide a timely response
2. Tell the truth
3. State a turnaround time
It’s ok to say “I don’t know but let me investigate and respond by the end of the day.” If you are diligent and still don’t have an answer then post again about your progress and ask to take it offline. Provide an email address and ask the customer to contact you there so you can more easily stay in touch.
Any response to a customer service question is better than no response.
The CMO Council study found that when asked what customers think it means to “like” a brand on Facebook 49% said they “like” a brand because they are already loyal customers.
Loyal customers expect brands to be listening. I believe that most people don’t expect brands to be listening 24/7 but that they do, as the study suggests, expect a timely response. A Facebook response time of 24 hours is good but ideally you’d provide a response within an hour, especially if it’s during business hours.
A timely, truthful response is better than a fake response.
Don’t say you’re going to investigate and then never report back. Don’t make up an answer when you really don’t know the answer. And certainly don’t tell a lie. Getting caught out in a lie or half truth is worse for brand management than offering a brief, true statement.
A timely, truthful response that offers a turnaround time is the best customer service response.
When you need to take your time to provide a quality response, buy some time by providing a brief initial response with a turnaround time for a full reply. Then stick to your turnaround time.
Speed of response should not be confused with quality or depth. Customer expectations are high when engaging with brands online so manage expectations by providing an initial response that is timely, truthful and offers a turnaround time for a response. Then do what you say you’re going to do, and follow up within that timeframe.
Being responsive to online customer service questions, complaints and feedback is essential to good social media marketing and keeping customers engaged with your brand. Do you have any stories or examples to share?
Posted by Monique Trottier | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Google Search Results have changed significantly over the last 3 months, and if you haven’t been following along, here’s what you need to know.
Google has made a ton of changes to how search results are displayed. These are big changes.
Imagine that Google is your favourite grocery store and you know exactly how to navigate the aisles, that the deli is always labelled “Deli” and that the aisle end-cap promotions are the same whether you have a carry-basket or a cart. Then one day you walk in and all the aisles are rearranged according to what your friends like, the deli sign sometimes says “Deli” but other times says “Cold Cuts” or “Lunch Meat”, and the aisle contents vary depending on the mobility of your chosen device (carry basket or cart). This is the new Google Search.
Here’s a recap of 5 recent changes that affect Google search results.
Jan 12, 2012: Google implements “better” titles in search results
Google will now change the meta title displayed for your webpage in search results if it feels that it can improve the relevancy between the content of your webpage, the search query and the meta title in search results. There’s no report for when Google does this or what title they choose to use, but HTML Suggestions in Webmaster Tools will provide suggestions.
Recommendation: If you are using a meta title not specific to your page content, you are likely to see Google search results displaying a different title than your meta title to create more relevancy in search results.
In Google Analytics, set the advance segment to Non-Paid Search Traffic and use the Site Content > Page Title report to see what pages get the most visits from organic traffic. Add a secondary dimension to see Keywords. Is the keyword found in the page title? If not, you might want to revisit how your meta title is generated and talk to your SEO expert.
Jan 10, 2012: Google Search plus Your World launches
Users logged into Google see a different set of search results than those not logged in. In particular, those with a Google+ account see a big difference. The search results are specific to you and the things shared with you or amongst your Google+ circles.
Name searches auto complete with people and pages in your network so that People and Pages are easier to find within a few clicks (the assumption is that this is what you are seeking).
In some ways it reminds me of the bad paperclip that used to “help” me in Microsoft Word. For example, searching for “John Battelle SOPA” before he wrote his recent post only displayed his Twitter, Google+ and other social media accounts. I could not find a result for his blog. Here’s what SEOMoz to say (with examples).
Recommendation: Social sharing and a solid social media outreach plan have always been important. Now more than ever, socialization in addition to optimization is required to show up in results. Local search guru Andrew Shotland believes aggressive social sharing is the future for brands.
Dec 15, 2011: Googlebot-Mobile crawls webpages
Smartphones and tablets are on the rise. Googlebot-Mobile is a spider that crawls your website to see if it is optimized for mobile. The bot is looking specifically for mobile-optimized webpages. Mobile optimization does not mean “I think my site looks ok on the iPad and I can zoom in to see it on my phone.” Mobile optimization means do you have a mobile version of your website because Google search results on phones and tablets will skew towards websites that are mobile optimized, meaning your webpages might not show up in mobile search results.
Recommendation: Visit Google Analytics’ Audience > Mobile report. If more than 14% of your traffic is from mobile, you need a mobile optimization plan. Doing nothing is not an option—That’s like running a 7-11 and randomly closing 1 day a week. Check out the GoMo initiative, and if you run a big ecommerce site, definitely talk to our friends at Mobify.com.
Dec 14, 2011: Authorship introduced
Google search results now show annotations for authors. See below. This happens only if you verify ownership of the sites where you blog. Stats appear in Google Webmaster Tools under the Labs tab.
Recommendation: If you are going to blog seriously, you want to verify your authorship so your webpages stand out more in Google search results. The avatar is your Google+ icon so there is some linking that happens between your posts, your Google+ profile and what appears in Google search results via a snippet of code . Google Support offers some simple steps for verifying authorship here.
Nov 11, 2011: Mobile Advertising, Mobile PPC
Google launches the mobile site development portal mentioned above, HowToGoMo. The push for mobile optimization is not going to go away. Adwords, into January, is still adding new features to improve the granularity and targeting available to mobile search advertisers. And remember Google owns Android. They have a vested interest in mobile usage and sites optimized for mobile experiences.
Recommendation: If you are running Google Adwords, separate your Mobile campaigns from desktop campaigns as the landing page for mobile ads needs to be optimized for mobile otherwise visitors will have a poor experience and are likely to bounce at a higher rate, which affects your quality score, and ultimately what you have to pay per click in order to have your ads appear.
Those are just 5 recent changes to Google search results in the last 3 months. That’s a lot of change quickly, especially when it comes to mobile optimization and social search, and the pace of change is likely to continue.
Want insights into the grand plan for Google search? Watch this 6-minute video on the evolution of Google.
Search marketing, as part of the online marketing industry, is operating at lightning speed. If you don’t have someone on your team who is staying on top of it, you’re going to fall behind quickly.
Wordstream has a great infographic this morning on “What Industries Contributed to Google’s $37.9 Billion in 2011 Revenues?” If you’re running PPC campaigns on Google Adwords, then you might want to check this out because 96% of that $37.9 Billion came from advertising. Is your industry among the top 10 industries that spent the most on Google Ads in 2011? And, are you also bidding on the 5 commonly used keywords? If yes, check out the average cost per click—$1.20 to $43.39 depending on the industry and keyword phrase.
Play with the Google Zeitgeist to see mattered to use in 2011. The Zeitgeist sorts the billions of Google searches from last year into the 10 fastest-rising global queries and it lets you drill down by country and month. Seems like 13-year-old Canadian musician Rebecca Black was #1 fastest-rising search globally and in Canada. Take that Justin Bieber.
Posted by Monique Trottier | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Clay Shirky stopped by the TED offices to chat about “Why SOPA is a bad idea.” 100% totally worth watching. Shirky offers a great explanation, with metaphors that help SOPA and PIPA make sense, and a quick history of how we got into this copyright infringement debate with rights holders anyway.
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