BEA Book Expo America: Smart Strategies for Independent Publishers

BEA Book Expo America: Smart Strategies for Independent Publishers


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Should You Rent or Buy Social Real Estate?
Photo: Abandoned farm shed by serendipitypeace2007, modified under a Creative Commons license. Anyone looking for a place to live invariably needs to first answer this question: "should I rent or buy?" Each has pros and cons. If you rent a...

Digital Future
Users see the Net as a more important info source than traditional media

80- percent of users 17 and older consider the Internet to be an important source of information, says USC's 2008 Digital Future Report ..

 68 percent rated it higher than TV, 63 percent preferred the Net to radio and 63 percent rated it better than newspapers as an info source.

The Digital Future Project also found that the social aspects on online communities is growing at a rapid rate

Membership in online communities has more than doubled in only three years. More than half of online community members (54 percent) log into their community at least once a day, and 71 percent of members said their community is very important or extremely important to them. Fifty-six percent of members reported meeting their online counterparts in person.

More than half - -55 percent -- say they feel as strongly about their online communities as they do about their real-world communities.

Just as the Internet is changing the way we communicate and interact, so it is changing how businesses should interact with their customers and stakeholders. 

The role of PR is shifting.

Find out where your audiences are online and make it easier for them to share ideas with you and with each other.

Analytics Can Improve Your Content Strategy
Interview with Heather Dougherty of Hitwise

If you've been wondering how to figure out what content works and what you could write about to attract visitors to your site, try digging into your analytics program.

Every website should have at least a basic analytics package from your host, but if you really want to get in-depth competitive intelligence from your log files, try something like HitWise.

I chatted with Heather Dougherty, Director of Research for the US for HitWise last week about her upcoming panel at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose in August.

You can hear the interview here.  (Be patient while it downloads)

She made some great points about using analytics to track your online reputation, find out how people talk about your company and your products, what language they use when they search and where they go before and after they visit your site.

SES San Jose is just around the corner now.  I'll be there from August 18 - 20. I love meeting my readers at conferences, so stop by my session on storyteller marketing on Monday the 18th after lunch.

BlogPotomac: WaPo Dan Beyers talks about the future of the media
Media needs a new model of audience engagement

Dan Breyers, local business editor at the Washington Post, talks about how social media is impacting the media and how the paper is adapting.

He starts by reading a prediction that within 10 years there will be no more print media. And goes on to give his personal strategy as business editor.

 1.  Provide excellent content.

2.   Provide new ways for companies to engage with the audience. Offering access to the data and more indepth content about the companies

3.  Make it easy for people to use and share the information

This is definitely not your grandmother's newspaper. 

Take note, PR folk.  If this is where reporters and newspapers are heading, your media relations strategy will have to look very different too.

Hat tip to Geoff Livingstone for the video

The iPhone is a Pandora's Box for Radio
Radio is Dead by super-structure The following is also my column in Advertising Age next week. All the talk about one medium replacing another, to date, has largely been just that - talk. Over time new formats tend to be...