The Kiplinger Letter is a master class in writing succinctly, clearly, and so readers can easily scan the text — even though it’s only four pages long. I admire that style. Jim Patterson of Kiplinger explains that you can get the gist of any section, and any page, just by reading the underlined parts. It’s…
The typical sales funnel of awareness > consideration > purchase doesn’t go deep enough for publishers. There are several more steps in the journey, and different tools and methods are appropriate for each phase. The following chart can help you get started. Create goals and methods for each of these ten steps in your customer’s…
Summary: Measurement is often a prerequisite to growth, but it can also lead you astray. “What gets measured gets done” is a useful saying in many ways. Measuring something requires attention. Measuring allows you to track improvement. An impending measurement motivates action. However, a bias towards measurable things might lead us to abandon worthwhile things…
Just this morning I was reading a Bo Sacks article about publishers who use AI to make their writing more SEO-friendly, and I thought, doggone it, why don’t you use AI to make your writing more reader-friendly! I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how little publishers have done to improve the online reading experience….
According to an internal memo from BuzzFeed’s CEO Jonah Peretti cited by Forbes, “the business model of news tailored for social media had become too difficult to sustain.” An article distributed by Bo Sacks yesterday with the title, How the social traffic that gave life to BuzzFeed News ultimately led to its demise has Peretti…
In the world of publishing, AI can be a powerful tool to improve your content creation process. However, it is essential to use it with caution and verify its results. Bo Sacks distributed a cautionary tale from the world of artificial intelligence that everyone in the publishing industry should read. A German weekly used AI…
I’ve been speaking about re-using content a lot recently, and that reminded me of an article by David Tvrdon, “Why turning newsletters into podcasts and podcasts into newsletters is a great strategy for publishers.” It was emailed out by Bo Sacks on April 11. He gives three reasons right up front. Build your brand Maximize…
On Friday, Bo Sacks distributed Cosmin Ene’s article, “Subscription Cannibalization is here. Just not as you think.” Cannibalization is, of course, eating your own. Publishers often use that word to describe when a new, low-priced product undercuts the sales of an older, higher-priced product. As a general rule, I think fear of cannibalization is misguided….
My friend Paul Gerbino (of Triumvirate Content Consultants) promotes the idea of thinking of content as water, by which he means it will take the shape of whatever type of container you put it in, and needs to flow into lots of different nooks and crannies. I like that image. Content should be created with…
I’m toying with a few ideas about how to write an article in such a way that people understand what’s been written. I’m riffing off two things I read yesterday. The first was from a Brian Morrissey article about reducing friction, in which Brian pointed out that friction can be useful in some cases. For…
Customer retention should start immediately after the sale. This is true for e-commerce stores and for publishers, although in the first case it means repeat purchases while in the latter it means continuing a subscription. Some retention strategies are common to stores and to publishers. For example, both should … Establish a relationship immediately after…
At the MACMA Industry Days event last week, Lisa Pistilli interviewed Jim McKelvey. The conversation about the monetization of Jim’s “Invisibly” app is very interesting. (Use this link to watch the video.) I riffed on some of the issues in this issue of my podcast.
My friend Jeff Kobil sent me an interesting article that claims Google is going to start paying publishers for content. Whenever I see something like this, it reminds me of square dancing. Remember when the caller would say “hurrah, hurray, you’re going the wrong way”? This is why. Any time you let Google set the…
The April issue of The Krehbiel Letter urges publishers to focus on the reader. Here’s a quick summary of the articles in this edition. If you want your readers to have a good experience with your content, consider building a paywall. Ads are designed to distract the reader. Consider adding content recommendations to your site,…
Summary: Smart content recommendations can help your readers find the parts of your site that meet their needs. When you combine high bounce rates and high single-visit rates, most traffic on most sites is from “drive-bys” – i.e., the one-and-done visitor. Getting some of those drive-bys to stay for one more page view can make…