A few weeks ago The Business Insider, one of my favorite news sites, published an interesting piece about digital media and the future of the newspaper business in honor of the site’s third birthday. Henry Blodget, the site’s founder and CEO, has some great data about The New York Time’s revenue and overall business that I recommend you check out – it is a very interesting read.  Blodget’s post got me thinking about the NYT’s business, and I decided to throw together a quick list of things that I believe could help save the Time’s business in the long run:

1.  Develop a plan to shut down the printing presses in a MAX of 3 years - As Blodget points out, the costs of the print business are incredibly high and print is obviously on its way out.  There is no denying that NYT will need to slim down their staff over the next few years as print subscriptions decline.  If I were in charge, I would push this transition through in the next three years, grabbing some revenue from the print side, while either retraining some of the staff to produce more short term content along with longer form editorial/column pieces or hiring some young up and coming new media types on the cheap to fill the spots of the dinosaurs. Harsh? Maybe, but necessary for survival.

2. Spin-out particular blogs and contributors into their own properties - NYT is such a massive property that they have successful media properties and blogs living inside of their domain such as the Bits Blog and Media Decoder, two of my favorites.  These properties would increase in value and would be able to drive more revenue if they lived both inside of NYT but also as their own properties on their own domains.  This would allow NYT to basically double up on advertising real estate while enabling the Bits Blog to further develop a micro-community, provide deeper informational resources, and still leverage the main domain for traffic referral.

3. Move out of New York – I don’t exactly mean physically, but NYT needs to start to build a strategy to get into the local news space in order to get their digital revenues up to those of their print levels.  This could either come from launching new properties by hiring their own people in different locations or buying up promising local new media properties and providing them with editorial/sales resources and expertise.

What do you think NYT needs to do to ensure the success of their business in the digital world?  Let us know in the comments!

If you like NYT and want to help them out, tweet this article at them or email to someone over there!

As I’ve mentioned before, we are all about helping publishers succeed online, so I wanted to share the 3 things I think online news sites and bloggers could take from the lean startup philosophy that could help their businesses:

1. Don’t write a single sentence of a post/article without talking to potential readers – Both Ellis and Ries stress the importance of testing the market for a web app before wasting the time of writing any code.  There is no reason journalists and bloggers should be any different.  Before starting a blog or new media property, create a simple landing page through Google docs with a description of the content you will be creating with an email form for interested users to fill out so you can notify them when you launch.  You can simply email the link to the page to people you think may be interested, post the link on social networks or even buy some Google AdWords for targeted keywords relevant to your content type.  From the number of people who fill out the form, you will be able to get a small sample size of early reader’s you can speak to about the direction of the blog that will give you some good data on your target audience.

2. Test several content types and then kill some – Ellis and Ries are big advocates of killing features early in a products lifecycle in order to develop the “Minimum viable product” for adoption in market.  Assuming you see some demand for the general topic you plan to cover, next you should develop several different content types you intend on creating on your site.  For example, some content types might include opinion/analysis pieces, list posts (i.e. top 10’s), summaries or reviews, etc.  Once you have created one or two items for each content type, ship them off to the users who expressed interest in your content type and see which type users like the best.  You should be able to tell from certain metrics (clicks, comments, link backs, retweets/pins, etc.) and from speaking to users what the minimum viable content types for a site would be to continue to retain them as readers.

3. Published doesn’t mean complete, optimize and iterate quickly - If a developer finished writing the code and designing his app, opened it for users and then didn’t continue to improve upon the product after it were live, they probably wouldn’t be very successful.  Now that we are no longer restricted to printing stories permanently on paper, there is no reason we shouldn’t iterate on our content after it is published online and we have been able to collect some data about how readers are taking to that piece of content.  Some of the simplest metrics we can gather to test how a piece of content is performing are click-through rates, time on page and bounce rates.  If an article isn’t getting clicks or retweets, trying changing its title on the fly.  Here is a great example of how the HuffingtonPost A/B tests their headlines in real-time.

These are just a few of the principles we can apply to help us create successful online content.  Are you a practitioner of the lean startup methodology?  Have suggestions for how this can be applied to online news and journalism?  Share them with us in the comments below!

With our headquarters located right in the heart of Downtown Boston, most of the Yadda Squad members are pretty big fans of Boston.com, the online destination of The Boston Globe.  It is the go to destination for all things Boston – Sox, Celts, local news and events – you name it, they’re usually on it. So for our first post in the series, we’ve decided to go with Boston.com.

Many of you have heard all the buzz around Chris Nolan’s recent movie Inception.  It is a wildly exciting, action packed thriller about Leonardo DiCaprio manipulating people’s dreams and blurring the lines between reality and the world of the mind’s subconscious.  On July 15th the day before Inception’s opening, Wesley Morris, one of the Globe’s movie critics, wrote a solid review of Nolan’s flick.  The timing of the piece was a perfect way to facilitate Boston.com reader’s to go see the movie on opening weekend, so my first thought was, why doesn’t the Globe integrate with Fandango or some service to directly sell movie tickets on their site?

So after a little investigation, I found some software in the section “Things To Do” called Zvents, which lists different types of events by location, such as movies by theater, concerts, etc.  Clearly outsourcing some of the work that goes into this type of information gathering and architecture is useful, however here are a few things I think could be improved to help Boston.com see more revenue from their great movie content:

1. Call to action, buy tickets to Inception! WAY more obvious – Back when Avatar came out, not surprisingly we found from collecting data from our index that media coverage of movies correlates with box office earnings.  With that being said, I think the main monetization strategy for this piece of content is to capture the intent of the reader which is to learn about Inception, and drive them to purchase their Inception tickets through Boston.com or at least prove they drove the reader to a chosen ticket vendor.

However, the link to the Zvents listing to find showtimes and theaters is a small link in the left hand, in-text module. See the screen shot below.  This call to action needs to be loud and obnoxious.

2. If they stick with using Zvents, change the design, or just directly embed a Fandango form if possible – Assuming the Zvents call to action to purchase tickets is moved to the actual page of Mr. Morris’s review, the design provided will need some optimization.  The first image below show’s the top of Zvents Inception page which provides a brief summary of the movie, which the reader will not need because they are already getting this information from the trusted Mr. Morris. The second image provides the right information for the next step in a reader’s decision process for purchasing tickets, where to see the movie in the area and the times it is playing, but there is a serious lack of call to action buttons screaming at the user to purchase tickets.  If possible, I would directly embed a Fandango form to make the purchasing process as frictionless as possible.

Locations & times image below:

3. Give the reader more social proof that others have seen the movie – I would test calls to action to engage more users to review the movie.  While they have commenting software and two user reviews in the Zvents application for the movie, these are buried and not easy to find.  The more social proof that can be provided, the more likely the reader will be to jump at buying tickets then and there.

4. Put the purchase calls to action in multiple places throughout the article and see which one works best – Morris’s article is two pages long, so it will be important to have the call to action at different breaks in the review.  My guess is most people don’t make it to the second page, but the calls to action could be in a number of places:

• the main fixture of the right side bar.
• an in-text module at the beginning, middle or end of the first page.
• embedded above or in the user reviews/comments.

I am uncertain how realistic any of these changes are regarding how much burden they would put on the copy editors or the technical team at Boston.com but some of these tweaks could potentially lead to higher revenues.  What do you think?  Are there better ways to drive Boston.com readers to purchase their tickets from Morris’s review?  Leave thoughts/ideas in the comments below!

SO – in order to effectively and successfully move forward in developing better business models for new and old media, I decided to boil down all of the conversations, and in one moment of clarity it became obvious that what it all comes down to is ACDC.  Yes, ACDC – but not the band. While I am sure Malcom and Angus Young most certainly have some solid insights regarding the future of news, I am talking about an acronym of the points of the news process that have been thunderstruck by the digital disruption: Access - Creation - Distribution - Consumption.

So let’s break these down,

1. Access – Not long ago, there was limited access for different parties to almost every aspect of the news creation and consumption process.  ”Press conferences”, believe it or not, were actually limited to the press  rather than events that are now streamed live and directly to people anywhere in the world with an internet connection, the appropriate hardware/software and no form of any sort of press pass.  The Internet is the new press pass.

2. Creation – Typewriters, old school computers and printing presses used to provide a huge barrier to entry into the news creation process – obviously this is no more.  From Tweets, to pins, to Blogger/Wordpress, and Facebook status updates, whether you like it or not (Mom), everyone can now be a publisher.

3. Distribution – Across the country, door steps which were once the symbol for personal news delivery are becoming paperless.  News stands are less prevalent, and trucks will become obsolete (eventually) in the process of delivery news and content.  While the game “Paperboy” may not be as relevant to our everyday lives, we are all now our own forms of new-age digital paper boys, as we share links to articles and videos to our friends, family and colleagues from our laptops and phones.  The atomic unit of the news, which was once a bundled part of a dead tree with box scores, puzzles, obits, op-eds, and daily reports, is now simply a string of characters hosted somewhere in the digital abyss.  And while an average link’s value in today’s attention economy will be fleeting, it’s life expectancy is forever with the potential to travel much farther and faster than any print publication.

4. Consumption – Reading the news used to be like an event.  We even had a designated day of the week, Sunday, in which we loaded people up with more news and bigger stories.  As access, creation and distribution have all seen supply side surpluses, our demand for news and content and our consumption habits have evolved along with these changes.  As consumers, we skim numerous headlines from our laptops, on our phones and have TV or video running at the same time in the background (well some of us).  We have little loyalty to any particular publishers, and while most claim to disdain information overload, many of us would be lost without  it.

So, as we begin to share more information about the News Graph in the coming months, we want to solicit as much feedback as possible from those involved in the future of news and media.  How do you see disruption and change in ACDC?  Do you have specific cases or data to share regarding trends or potential business models for the future? Whatever it is, please share and join in our ongoing news conversation on Pinyadda!

This week’s Publisher Spotlight focuses on a top Pinyadda community member, Greg Elwell, who is an inbound marketing expert who owns and operates ZephyrMarketing.net.  Greg is a Hubspot certified Inbound marketing partner and professional, who wrote one of the best posts breaking down the power of Pinyadda to date.  For anyone interested in social media, inbound marketing or marketing in general, we strongly suggest you follow Greg and the Zephyr Marketing blog on Pinyadda and on Twitter.  Below is our interview with Greg:

Cgarb: Tell me about ZephyrMarketing.net’s angle as an online publisher.

Greg: ZephyrMarketing.Net is primarily a blog to help local, small- to medium-sized businesses be more visible, credible and remarkable with their online marketing efforts.

Cgarb: At Pinyadda, we are fascinated with companies that create content and media to drive sales of their product or services, can you tell us a little bit about the history of how you began Zephyr?

Greg: I started Zephyr Marketing LLC about 5 years ago. Just prior to starting Zephyr I was the director of business marketing, west region for Nextel Communications.

Cgarb: Who would love your site, and what types of people need to know about Zephyr Marketing?

Greg: I get a lot of people from GenY to Baby Boomers finding practical advice and how-to information on the site. Being a boomer myself, and knowing this generation didn’t grow up in the computer and digital age, new technologies and modern marketing are many times difficult for them to grasp. So, I provide not only the why or strategic side of these, but also the how do they work, and how you can make them work for you side.

Cgarb: How is Zephyr’s content different from other sites covering similar topics?

Greg: As I mentioned above, the zephyr site appeals to people who are looking for in-depth information on inbound and social media marketing strategies and technologies. There are many whitepapers and how-to guides on how to develop a strategy and then begin using the tools effectively to grow your business.

Some of the more popular resources available in the blog or as downloads include:

• Twitter Guide for Local Business Marketing
• Planning to Set Up a Facebook Fan Page
• How to Set Up a Facebook Fan Page
• Intro to Google’s Local Business Listings
• Create a Killer Google Local Business Listing
• 16 Tips for Gaining More Fans on Facebook
• How to Start a Successful Blog
• The 6 Stages of Content Marketing
• An Inbound Marketing Traffic Calculator
• Pinyadda: A Socially Enabled Listening Tool

I’m learning constantly myself and turning what I learn into action in my life and business; then sharing it with others. I love getting new ideas and then trying them out.

But I also am careful to respect the relationship side of social media. Using social media is most effective when you build relationships and share useful, relevant content. It troubles me when I see the abuse of social media tools by those who use them as a direct response vehicle.

We are so fortunate we have the tools and access to be able to build and share our personal brand, what we’re passionate about, and work at doing good – making a difference.  I like what Tim O’Reilly said at a conference last year: “Create more value than you capture.” I hope Zephyr and B2B Inbound will always be found to reflect that sentiment.

Cgarb: Do you run Zephyr and B2B Inbound all by yourself?  That is pretty impressive.

Greg: The ZephyrMarketing.net site is run solely by myself. I’ve developed a process to supply what I call, “Local Business Social Media Marketing” that involves 4 phases: Planning, Building, Engaging and Managing. It’s part DIY and part managed services. I also handle the technical aspects of setting up accounts, configuring and optimizing them.

A typical solution integrates a WordPress, self-hosted blog on the Headway Theme along with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts.

So to kick things off, we will be profiling two of our favorite publishers on Pinyadda this week, starting with Aleheads.com.  We recently spoke to the fine gentlemen over at Aleheads and we are proud to provide our very first Featured Publisher Spotlight.

CG: What is Aleheads?

AH: Aleheads is a beacon of absurdity in the otherwise mediocre sea of beer blogs.

We provide Beer 101 for novices, information about brewers and breweries, and tasting notes for a wide variety of beers. It is written by a group of jackasses who know just enough about beer to be annoying in a bar, but not enough to be accurate or insightful in any way.

CG: How did all of this beer blogging get started?

AH: Aleheads was founded on a wing and a prayer in 2010 by three drunk dreamers. They had been sending endless, pedantic e-mails to one another about beer for years. Finally, one of the Aleheads suggested that perhaps they should capture their conversations on the interwebs to preserve them in the dustbin of history. Aleheads was born!

CG: So if I am out at bar, who should I be talking to about Aleheads?  Who would absolutely LOVE your site?

AH:  Aleheads readers are passionate about beer and beer culture. They may work in bars or breweries, or in cubicles where they spend their days dreaming of hops and barley. All an Aleheads reader needs to enjoy the site is a willingness to read and learn about beer.

Aleheads readers most likely spend their time drinking with friends, looking for interesting brews, visiting Alehouses and Ale Factories, and engaging in beer-fueled debates with anyone who will listen. They love sports, movies, travel and cookies. Oh, and beer.

CG: Finally, the people behind Aleheads, tell us about your bad selves.

AH: Aleheads currently has 7 staff-members who carefully craft the prose that is disseminated to their adoring readership:

Brother Barley McHops: Brother Barley is the site administrator and the most verbose and prolific writer on Aleheads. He posts on a dizzying array of topics in his signature rambling, stream-of-consciousness prose.

Dr. Ripped Van Drinkale, III: Doc is the true beer expert amongst the Aleheads and his informed, opinionated posts have become fan favorites amongst Aleheads readers. Doc loves to share his hard-won beer knowledge with all who will listen.

Baron Sudsy Von Brue: An unrepentant beer snob, the Baron reports on prestige beers, hard-to-find offerings, high-end Alehouses, and elite Ale Factories. Sudsy is on an eternal quest to find the Holy Grail of brews…whatever that may be.

Mr. Slouch Sixpack: The everyman and resident contrarian amongst the Aleheads, Slouch writes highly-charged, pop culture-infused posts. He also serves as the social networking maven for the team.

Sir Magnus Skullsplitter: Fun-loving and good-natured, Magnus takes a thoughtful, measured approach to beer writing. He rarely meets a beer he doesn’t like and he often serves as the clear-headed voice of reason amongst the Aleheads.

Professor pH Lager: The Professor is the home-brewing guru for Aleheads. His unrivaled experience in the brew-it-yourself arts allows him to drop knowledge on Aleheads readers who want to learn more about making their own suds.

Lord Mashtun Copperpot: The newest Alehead, Mashtun brings to the table clever writing and an eager willingness to explore the world of beer. His unique style blends well with the cacophony of voices on the site.

Visit their profiles to follow them on Pinyadda:

Daniel Colangelo

Brian Donoghue

Chris Ercoli

Jon Frisch

Lauren Foye

Will Flanagan

Adam Fullerton

Rob Gonzalez

Christine Gottshall

Seth Hayward

Kristen Maguire

Teddy Sullivan

Anthony Tripicchio

Kipp Visi

Ben Webb

As the web has evolved, and we have evolved with it, we have started to see that “one size fits all” doesn’t apply to graphing our personal connections online, and more particularly it does not apply when hosting different types of user behaviors.  This is why we manage and engage with our business connections on Linkedin and not typically on Facebook, to give one example.   Considering that social media is still a very young medium, it is safe to expect that more platforms will emerge hosting different connection types and user behaviors.

In the past several years, the Internet has turned the news and greater media industry on its head – everything from content creation to distribution has completely changed.  This has created problems for both consumers and publishers.  For consumers, discovering and accessing the news that is most valuable to us has become overwhelming.  For publishers, developing a strong community and converting that community into hard dollars has become incredibly difficult.   At Pinyadda, we have designed our platform specifically focusing on the evolved news and media landscape, hosting what we call the “news graph“.

The individual parts of the news graph have existed for a long time (post about this coming soon).  With Pinyadda, we are focused on connecting these critical parts and providing more value to the different entities within the news ecosystem.  We have studied how our behavior as news consumers has changed and have provided simple tools for enabling each individual user to get the information they need from the sites they like, the topics they follow and from interesting people.  For publishers, we have focused on providing an open distribution platform aimed at extending publisher’s reach and exposure through automated distribution and organization.  This framework will provide the foundation to enable publishers to capture more critical data and eventually monetize the distribution of their content.

While we have experienced tremendous growth in the short time our platform has been open, we are still young and focused on making improvement to best serve our community of users and publishers.  Our intention for this post is to start of on-going discourse regarding the evolution of the news graph, which we invite you all to contribute to.  We believe the news graph is a critical component to ensuring that consumers have an effective way to access the best information available for their unique interests and needs, as well as enabling publishers to capitalize on providing quality content.

Coming soon: The Working Parts of the News Graph

By pinning articles from the inbound marketing and social media topics (and in turn flexing your sweet online marketing prowess) you will earn badges to boast for varying levels of inbound marketing expertise as determined by the champions of inbound marketing themselves — Hubspot.

Check out a little preview below of the badges and then jump in and start pinning and getting your content curation on and get yours!  Who knows, maybe you even have what it takes to be a “Maven” of inbound marketing on Pinyadda…

Here’s how you can earn Hubspot’s badges:

*Click to join Pinyadda if you haven’t yet

1. Follow the inbound marketing and social media topics, packed feeds of breaking articles about those topics from thousands of sites — and yeah, these feeds have been known to change lives (click the links, login and then click “follow”)
2. Pin and discuss articles from these topic feeds (hint: it may take more than one Pin)
3. Boast your inbounding marketing prowess to your Twitter and Facebook networks by clicking on the Hubspot badges you earn in your Pinyadda Profile

About Pinyadda:

Pinyadda is a personalized social news platform that provides the easiest way to follow the news from the people, sites and topics you are interested in.  Share, or as we say “Pin” articles, engage in interesting conversations and earn points to become a “Maven” of a topic or an “Ambassador” of your favorite site!  Pinyadda is the most fun way to share the news!  Located in the majestic Downtown Crossing are of Boston (yea, we said majestic) our doors are always open for a pop-in from loyal users.  See you on the ‘yadda!

About Hubspot:

HubSpot, Inc. offers B2B inbound marketing software. Its products include HubSpot Owner, which generates qualified leads and convert leads into sales; and HubSpot Marketer that offers inbound marketing tools. The company also provides search engine optimization, business blogging, competitor analysis, closed-loop marketing analytics, Website editor, lead tracking and intelligence, lead grader, landing page wizard, marketing intelligence, social media, and inbound marketing solutions. HubSpot, Inc. was founded in 2006 and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

By pinning articles from the e-commerce, food, pets and travel topics on Pinyadda,  you can earn some of our most unique, pop-culture filled badges (creative courtesy of CSN’s talented Will Flanagan, an avid Pinyadda user).  What’s more, these badges come with unique discount codes at various CSN online stores!

Check out a little preview below of the badges and then jump in and start pinning to get yours!  Who knows, maybe you even have what it takes to be a “Maven” of e-commerce on Pinyadda…

Here’s how to earn CSN’s badges:

*Click to join Pinyadda if you haven’t yet

1. Follow any or all of the e-commerce, food, pets and travel topic feeds (click the links, login and then click “follow”)
2. Pin and discuss articles from these topics to unlock pop-culture badges with discounts — from 5% up to 15% — to CSN’s stores (hint: it may take more than one Pin)
3. Boast your shopping prowess to your Twitter and Facebook networks by clicking on the badges in your Profile

About Pinyadda: 

Pinyadda is a personalized social news platform that provides the easiest way to follow the news from the people, sites and topics you are interested in.  Share, or as we say “Pin” articles, engage in interesting conversations and earn points to become a “Maven” of a topic or an “Ambassador” of your favorite site!  Pinyadda is the most fun way to share the news!  Located in the majestic Downtown Crossing are of Boston (yea, we said majestic) our doors are always open for a pop-in from loyal users.  See you on the ‘yadda!

About CSN Stores:

CSN Stores is comprised of over 250 specialized online stores that offer a variety of home goods products, such as cookware, bedroom furniture and modern furniture. Most items ship for free.  CSN Stores is located in the Prudential Tower in Boston.