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...

A good friend of mine just sent me a link to a very interesting article on iMedia Connection about Google Analytics. I agree with the author, Brandt Dainow, that the analytics companies are in big trouble with the launch of the new Google Analytics interface. Web analytics are becoming a commodity now. But I haven’t looked closely enough to know if there is still enough value in WebTrends, HBX, or Omniture to justify the expense of those systems. They have enough extras like conversion funnel analysis, dashboards, cross-property reporting, etc that it may still be worthwhile for larger or more...

I’ve been talking with several publishers who have asked what are the key metrics they should be using to measure their web site business? Obviously, the number one metrics is revenue per month, but here are the key metrics that I like to use when measuring the health and growth of a web publishing business. Unique visitors per month – Even with the problems counting unique visitors, this is still a useful metric to guage the overall reach of a site. Just remember that cookie deletion is on the rise and the number of unique visitors you report is likely quite inflated over the...

Wow, what a wild ride the past few weeks have been. I’ve been incredibly busy working with various B2B and consumer enthusiast publishers. It’s been exhilarating and I see so much opportunity in the companies I’ve been working with. It’s exciting to see them really embracing online media and making significant impact on their businesses. However, I realize that I’ve been delinquent in keeping my blog up-to-date. I feel kind of like your favorite auto mechanic who is so busy working on other people’s cars that his own car is neglected. So it’s time to get...

Metrics continue to be a real hot spot for publishers and marketers alike. It’s become so much of an issue that I am collaborating with a friend of mine to write a strategic report called “Online Metrics Demystified: What Marketers and Publishers Need to Know to Buy and Sell Online Media” … or something like that. Be on the lookout for it next month. In the meantime, I thought I’d share a conversation that I recently had with someone trying to make sense of email newsletter metrics. They asked me for the definition of several email-related metrics. Hope this helps! What...

NOTE: I wrote this article for the June 2007 issue of Folio. Here is the complete, unedited version… Just when you thought you had the hang of SEO and SEM to drive traffic to your publication’s web site, along comes another acronym for you to master: SMO. Social Media Optimization (SMO), was coined by Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy Public Relations in 2006 and is a set of tactics to get more exposure for your site in social media (blogs, forums, social bookmarking sites, etc.). The goal of SMO is to make it as easy as possible for others to link to your content and thus get as many...