eMedia Strategist

Speaking at Folio in 3 Online Sales Sessions

February 11, 2008 – 1:21 pm
I am honored to be speaking at 3 online sales related sessions at the 2008 Folio Summit later this month in Miami: Monetize Your Reader - 11:00 AM on Thursday, Feb. 21. Chris Collins (VP of Multimedia Sales for Dow Jones), Jonathan Chalon (VP and Group Publisher for Penton Media), and I will be showing how to really monetize user generated content (UGC). Where are the opportunities and pitfalls? What kinds of social media work in different markets? And how can you make the most money from online social media? As you know, I am a huge fan of UGC and believe it is one of the keys for any publisher in "owning" your market online. Sales Management Skills for New Media - 10:15 AM on Friday, Feb. 22. Jason Schaeffer (VP of Biz Dev for CNNMoney.com) and I will be talking about keys to online sales success. Regardless of your sales structure, how can ...

Posted in Community & Web 2.0, Sales | No Comments »

Six Keys to Online Sales Success

January 7, 2008 – 9:55 am
This article originally appeared in the December issue of Publishing Executive where you can read the full article. I've worked with dozens of different sales teams to help them become more effective sellers of online media. Sometimes these sales teams are integrated print/online teams, sometimes they are separate. They may be located in large markets or small, and may be business-to-business or consumer publishing companies. Regardless of size or scope, however, there are six keys to online sales success that always apply, and those companies that execute these keys are usually very successful in selling online media. Some of these steps should be taken before you even begin the sale, some during the sale, and others after the sale.  In a previous position, I once overheard a conversation one of our most successful online salespeople was having with a customer: "I don't want to take your money from you one time. I ...

Posted in Sales | No Comments »

Lessons Learned from Implementing Content Management Systems

November 2, 2007 – 9:58 am
So you want to implement or change your content management system (CMS)? Before you do, here are some quick things to consider that most media companies forget about: There is no silver bullet - There are some CMS companies who tell you their solution does everything ... and to some degree they make a valient effort at it. The problem, as one media executive recently told me, is that the one-size fits all solution is like a sofa bed. It's a sofa and it's a bed, but it doesn't do either of them very well. When developing your emedia business system strategy, look for best-of-breed solutions for the specific issue you are trying to solve, not the silver bullet solution that will answer all of your emedia needs. It doesn't exist despite what some vendors will try to sell you. Don't forget the cost of content conversion - When factoring cost, we often look at just the cost ...

Posted in Development | 1 Comment »

Taking a Position with Aspire Media

October 11, 2007 – 2:15 pm
Yes, it's true ... I am taking a position as Exec VP of eMedia for Aspire Media. In the six months since I left Penton, I have thoroughly enjoyed consuting with many great media companies--both B2B and consumer--and hopefully I've been instrumental in helping build their online media businesses. However, I have missed the operating side and being part of a great team. Aspire was one of the companies that I consulted with and while working with them I was very impressed by the vision of CEO Clay Hall, the quality of the investment team, the quality of the brands, and the talent and passion of everyone that I met there. Clay has also assembled an amazing, all-star management team that I am proud to be associated with. I'm also thrilled to be reuniting with TJ Harty, the VP of Technology at Aspire, who was my partner in crime at ...

Posted in Personal | 13 Comments »

The eMedia Revenue Pipeline

October 11, 2007 – 12:55 pm
I recently wrote and article for Min's B2B called The eMedia Revenue Pipeline. There is a logical progression to developing online revenue consisting of six steps:    Content - The type of content you publish (editorial, user generated, advertiser content, etc.), the depth of content you provide, and how you publish it (editorial workflow, frequency, etc.) Technology - How well you enable your content to be found, used, consumed, and shared with others in the community. Audience Development - How well you reach your traditional audiences via print / email, how well you extend beyond your reach with SEO / SEM / SMO, how often you make people want to come back to your site, and how many pages of content you can get them to consume while on your site. Marketing - This is not promotion! This is all about the kind of deliverables you create and how well you price and package them to ...

Posted in Editorial & Content, Sales | 1 Comment »

Vonage Visual Voicemail Transcription Follies

October 8, 2007 – 11:31 am
I am a Vonage subscriber and despite their financial difficulties, I really like their service. Free unlimited long distance anywhere in North America and several other countries ... what's not to love? One of my favorite features I subscribe to is called visual voicemail. For a few cents per email, Vonage will transcribe my voicemails and send them along to me as a text email. Since I hate listening to voicemail, but always have my BlackBerry with me, this is a wonderful service. (I wish my T-Mobile BlackBerry phone had the same service.) I'm not sure whether Vonage uses a technology like SpinVox or SimulScribe, whether they use an offshore transcription service, or some combination, but sometimes it just doesn't work as advertised and the results are hillarious. Just yesterday, I received my all-time favorite transcription. Makes me laugh out loud just looking at it: Date: Oct 08 2007 08:08:19 AM From: xxxxxxxxxxx To : Eric Shanfelt (xxxxxxxxxxx) "Eric. To ...

Posted in Personal | 2 Comments »

The 5 Types of Online Content

August 14, 2007 – 9:18 am
There are five types of content that we as publishers and editors can leverage to provide the best resource for our readers, generate the most traffic, and thereby create the most revenue potential: 1. Editorially generated content (EGC) - This is much more than just taking the content from the print magazine each month and putting it on the web. And it's more than making sure you have good titles, keywords, and meta data. It's also about the type of content you generate, the frequency, and even the workflow. Perhaps some content should flow to the web first and THEN to print. Ask yourself the question, if we didn't have a print magazine, how would we want to create and manage editorial content? 2. User generated content (UGC) - UGC is the big buzzword right now in online media and it should be. We can only generate so much content and cover ...

Posted in Editorial & Content | 2 Comments »

How to Sell Print and Online Together

August 2, 2007 – 11:09 am
I conduct emedia sales training sessions for many B2B and consumer enthusiast media companies and in my training agenda (PDF file) is a section on how print and online work together from a seller's perspective. One of the key points I stress is that there is very little overlap between the online audience and the print audience of a given brand. The research I have done with various publications shows there is typically 15% overlap between the two ... sometimes a bit more sometimes a bit less. As a seller this is gold! It means that your customers need to buy both print and online to reach all of their potential customers and is powerful ammunition to help them see the wisdom of a cross-media buy. BTW, for that 15% audience that overlaps, you can always use the Cross Media Optimization Study (CMOS) done a couple years ago to show that a message that hits an audience in multiple ...

Posted in Sales | 12 Comments »