Content Matters

To much fanfare, struggling bookseller Borders (NYSE:BGP) launched the new Borders.com website this week. Borders ended its seven-year partnership with Amazon, which was born after it shelved its original site, and has now launched its own ecommerce site at www.borders.com.

Visually, the site is rich yet a bit overwhelming. Borders has created what it calls the "magic shelf", which tries to capture the essence of a bookstore bookshelf. The bookshelf aims to provide improved personalization, but as a new user, it just shows me the basic shelves of new fiction, new nonfiction and new DVDs. Since what I buy is typically not on the bestseller lists, those shelves do little for me. Their search is powered by Endeca, whose guided navigation is definitely a step up from typical ecommerce search.

Other than the Magic Shelf, the main benefit that Borders is pitching here is the integration with its brick & mortar stores. Users can order from the website then pick up at a local store. Unless you live somewhere you can't accept deliveries, I don't see that combination of online+bricks as a huge benefit. Certainly less so than Blockbuster's ability to return rented DVDs at the store (which has hardly been the Netflix killer they thought it would be).

So, the main question for me becomes "what will drive the typical Amazon customer to instead visit Borders.com"? To start, let's look at the three things that typically drive users to Amazon:
1. Selection: their search tools are strong and their recommendation engine is compelling
2. Reviews: they have the biggest audience and the most reviews.
3. Price: their prices are consistently among the least expensive on the web (though not necessarily THE cheapest).

I don't see how Borders can beat them on either selection or reviews, so it comes down to price.  I did a quick (unscientific) sample of two books, checking Borders.com and Amazon. Here's what I found:

The hardcover edition of The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr has a list price of $25.95. Amazon sells it for $17.13, while the new Borders.com has it at $20.76.

Scott McClellan's new book, What Happened, will be released on Tuesday. The cover price is $27.95, while Amazon has a presale price of $15.37. Borders.com presale price is $27.95 - full boat retail. Interestingly, when I searched on Borders.com for "what happened", the new McClellan book was about the 10th entry listed, while it was #1 in Amazon. I like Endeca's guided navigation but clearly Borders has some more tuning to do if it can't showcase the presale of a book likely to be near the top of the bestseller list next week.

While I'm an atypical shopper (probably more than 90% of my durable good purchases are made online), I'm a reasonable candidate for Borders, primarily because the ground floor of my office building (100 Broadway in NYC) houses a Borders store. At various times, I've gone to Borders to buy a book only to find that it's selling for 20-30% more than via Amazon. If Borders can't be competitive on price, it doesn't matter what neat features they can add. No one will be there to find out. And that's why I believe that the new Borders.com will fail.

I’ve just finished reading the galleys of David Meerman Scott’s latest book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR.  The final version will be published in June; you can pre-order a copy here.

For those who read David’s Web Ink Now blog, the themes of this book will be familiar.  David released an eBook, the New Rules of PR, last year, focusing on direct-to-consumer press releases.  That eBook, plus all of his experiences in viral marketing have led to this new book. 

The book expands beyond PR to include online marketing, viral marketing and leveraging content.  As David points out, in this new environment, these areas are all converging.  A news release, posted to your website, simply becomes marketing content to the reader.  As with his previous book, Cashing in With Content, Scott uses compelling real-world examples to demonstrate the benefits of these methods.  I was pleased to see Alacra mentioned twice in the book – once for the Alacra Blog and again for the Alacra Wiki.

Even for those who read his blog regularly, David brings some new themes to the book.  There is an interesting discussion on the creation of buyer personas – for each type of buyer who may visit your site, so that you can provide relevant content to each buyer type.  This builds upon some of his earlier work, where he focused on content to address users in various phases of a purchase cycle. 

Roughly half the book is focused on putting these concepts to practice in your own environment.  These ten chapters provide specific guidance for understanding buyer personas, using content to position your company as a thought leader and writing content that will resonate with your buyers.  There are also hands-on chapters on blogging, podcasting and leveraging social networking sites.

David Meerman Scott clearly uses the tools that he writes about.  His eBook was downloaded more than 150,000 times, all through viral marketing.  Advance copies of his new book were distributed to a lengthy list of the bloggers who were mentioned in the book.  Clearly David knows that's an easy way to get all of those bloggers (like this one) to write a book review. 

The New Rules of Marketing and PR covers a lot of ground in less than 300 pages.   For traditional marketers and executives, the book is an accessible guide to the emerging models.  For those knee-deep in online marketing already, the New Rules serves as a useful checklist of tips and tools to ensure that your marketing, PR and content are working together to help you achieve your goals.

About a year ago, David Meerman Scott released a free e-book called "The New Rules of PR".  He posted it to his WebInkNow blog as a free download. 

It became an overnight viral marketing success, with more than 15,000 downloads the first week and more than 150,000 downloads over the course of the past year.  For those who haven't read it, the New Rules describes how smart companies are using press releases to reach consumers directly, rather than as a means of attracting traditional media attention.  Web practitioners have become skilled at leveraging SEO-rich press releases to drive traffic to their sites.

David has just released an updated second edition of the e-book, also available free at his blog.  And, of course, since David follows his own guidance, there's a press release describing the new version.  The second edition includes a forward by David McInnis, CEO of PRWeb (a Vocus company).  This version also features a snazzy new color cover as you can see above.

David has also posted a link to the presale of the companion hardcover book, due this spring.  In addition to having an even snazzier cover, the book will include a number of case studies, some of which have been previewed on David's blog in recent months., like this one on CruiseCompete.  If it's anything like his previous book, Cashing In With Content,it's sure to be a practical and relevant read.

Every senior manager in the media or publishing industry the past ten years has struggled with decisions about how to align their organization for e-media.  Do you have your print ad sales team sell online or bring in a dedicated team?  Is SEO a core competency or do you use outside consultants?  Should we centralize our web development or let each brand do its own thing?

And while it seems like we’ve debated this issue forever (or at least for a decade), the deliberation continues today.

Executive recruiter Cara Erickson (Managing Partner of New Coordinates) and Outsell Lead Analyst Chuck Richard have collaborated on a fascinating new study, “Creating the E-Media Organization.”  The study is based upon interviews with CEOs and e-Media executives at 18 magazine and news organizations.

The authors describe four potential frameworks:
1. Publisher’s pure play: the e-Media organization is completely separate from the traditional print organization, with its own P&L, reporting to the CEO.
2. Centralized structure with a corporate e-Media group servicing each of the business units.
3. A hybrid/matrix approach with online P&L’s rolled into the brand P&L’s.
4. Brand-integrated, where the e-Media function is fully integrated into each brand.

The “pure-play” approach was common in the mid-90’s as publishers sought to take advantage of this new, disruptive channel.  According to the study, only 2 of the 18 companies surveyed still employed a pure play model today.

The hybrid approach is the most commonly used today, with eleven of the eighteen companies surveyed using it.  In this model, the online business may have a separate P&L but it is rolled up into the brand P&L.  The benefit of this approach is that the online leaders interact with the traditional business leaders, which should lead to knowledge transfer over time.

The brand-integrated structure is clearly the preferred model in the long-term.  Business leaders should be focused on brands, not on platforms.  That being said, there are risks for companies looking to rapidly move to this approach without having the talent (both executive and through the ranks) to support it.

The report delves deeply into the leadership skills required to run today’s diversified media business.  The authors discuss the value of “straddlers”, whom they define as “executives with a traditional media background, but who’ve spent the past 5-10 years in interactive media.”  As they point out, not only are straddlers crucial in understanding the issues the business faces, but they are critical magnets in attracting online talent, otherwise hesitant to bring their digital media skills to an old media brand.  The need to infuse traditional media organizations with digital understanding often creates conflicts with the traditional publishing model, where management comes up through the ranks.  More and more, traditional publishers are going outside their organizations for new leadership, or finding that talent through acquisition of online properties.

Either way, the survey describes a huge imbalance between supply and demand.  Virtually all the companies in the study had more online vacancies than they were able to fill and one executive indicated that the “demand for e-talent is five times greater than the supply”.  The change in skills cut across all aspects of the business – in addition to the obvious needs in marketing, product and technology, the dynamic nature of online media has had a similar impact on sales and editorial.  Perhaps most critical, the study points out the need for nimble leadership at the top, capable of making fast decisions and recalibrating on the fly.  Or, as Outsell describes it, the need to “fail faster”.

For those who’ve spent the past decade leading media and publishing organizations through change, these issues are not new.  What may surprise some is the fact that ten years in, we’re still struggling to solve these issues and most media companies have yet to fully integrate online with their traditional platforms.  More importantly, the next five years will likely bring a more rapid pace of change than the past five.  Web services have lowered the barrier to entry for online content, so you’ll see more competitive pressures than in the past.

While there's no simple plan for managing this change, it's helpful to understand where you stand in comparison to your peers. 

To order a copy of the study, visit Outsell.

If you’re an organization seeking digital leaders to fuel growth, or if you’re a straddler (and if you’re a reader of this blog, there’s a good chance of that) seeking new opportunities, reach out to at New Coordinates.

When I finished reading John Battelle’s “The Search”, I intended to post a book review to my blog. But, although I found the book compelling, I realized that there was almost nothing I could add that hadn’t already been said in one of the more than 1,800 blog posts discussing the book. Not to mention, of course, the more than 40 reviews on Amazon, plus detailed articles in dozens of business magazines. Sometimes, there’s little more to say.

 

However, I’ve recently begun reading a different book on Google. This one, by search engine analyst Steve Arnold, is an e-book entitled “The Google Legacy: How Google’s Internet Search Is Transforming Application Software”.

This 295 page tome takes a technologically-focused look at Google, and proposes that Google and their network-centric approach is the “logical heir to the Microsoft dynasty”. 

The Google Legacy is geared to those looking to capitalize on the large economic ecosystem created by Google, or those who may soon find themselves threatened by it. As Arnold shows, Google is much more than simply web search. With more than 50 applications today, ranging from the Google Search Appliance to Google Local to Gmail to image management application Picasa, Google has leveraged its search technology in numerous ways. According to Arnold, this huge array of products and services exist due to Google’s software and hardware engineering achievements. Google’s success in these areas is as much tied to their ability to harness commodity hardware and Linux in creating massively parallel computing system as it is to their search algorithms. 

The Google Legacy is a comprehensive analysis of Google, its technology and its potential impact. If you’re in software, hardware or information services, or in a knowledge-driven business, you need to better understand the impact that Google will be having in your market. 

You can view the Table of Contents or read a sample chapter at the Infonortics site.

The concept of content does not typically get a lot of coverage outside of those who create and sell it.  That’s why it’s interesting that there are two new, compelling books, covering the world of content.

Having spent the day in the jury pool at the US Federal Court's Southern District, I've gotten a great opportunity to catch up on my reading.

John Battelle’s analysis of Google, The Search, has cracked the top 100 list at Amazon and has been selected as one of five nominees for the FT/Goldman Sachs "Business Book of the Year."  I will post a review of The Search shortly, particularly if I find myself selected for this jury.

At the same time, another new book has emerged, sharing case studies on companies who have successfully leveraged content on the Web.  David Meerman Scott’s Cashing in with Content is not a content industry book, per se.  Instead, it’s geared towards marketing professionals, business leaders, and anyone looking to communicate a message effectively, whether for marketing, awareness, recruitment or other purposes.

The heart of the book is a series of twenty case studies of organizations which utilize content effectively.  They are broken into three groups: E-Commerce, Business-to-business, and Educational, Healthcare, Nonprofit and Politics.  The case studies are well set-up and include interviews with key executives at each organization.  Do yourself a favor and read through all twenty, not just the ones "in your target area".  For example, I found that the practices of Aerosmith, Kenyon College and Tourism Toronto were all somewhat relevant to my e-commerce sites' needs.

The book concludes by defining a set of twelve best practices, exemplified by the twenty organizations profiled in the case studies.  Some of these practices may seem painfully obvious (“If you serve a global market, use global content”) but are often ignored by those developing websites.  Others take traditional offline practices and reinforce the need to apply them in the online world, such as “Link Content Directly to the Sales Cycle”.  Each of these best practices are then tied back to the specific case studies which support them.  For example, in supporting the sales cycle, the Tourism Toronto website supports those travelers first thinking about visiting Canada, then helps them throughout their trip planning.  The site also lets users self-select a path, depending upon whether they are an individual planning a vacation or business trip, a tour group or an organization planning a conference or meeting.

Business books are often either too ethereal or focused on practices only the largest organizations can afford.  David Scott’s Cashing in with Content is neither.  It offers a series of straightforward practices, supported by numerous real-world examples, in an enjoyable, quick read format.  If you want to be sure that your organization’s message is being communicated effectively, buy a copy, read it and put it into practice. 

Also, be sure to check out David Scott’s Web Ink Now blog, where he continues his focus on how to leverage content to generate results.